Adapting the use of attributes to the task environment in joint action: results and a model

Speakers use referring expressions to identify an object in the environment. To generate a referring expression, features of the intended referent have to be selected that distinguish the object from the other potential referents. Current accounts of referring expressions consider a number of factors that influence the choice of features but ignore the influences of the task environment. In particular, they do not address how these influences change the generation of referring expressions over an extended period of time. We present results of how colour terms are used to describe landmarks in a task oriented dialogue (a route communication task) and describe a computational cognitive model of the observed adaptations over time.