The paper deals with the relation between linguistic presupposition and epistemic vigilance. It proposes evolutionary and cognitive reasons why presuppositions should induce shallower processing, that proves effective in persuasion and manipulation. It shows examples of presuppositions being associated with reduced critical attention from commercial advertising and political propaganda. It summarizes the available experimental verification of this assumption, commenting on the fact that behavioural evidence confirms reduced attention for presupposed contents, while neurophysiological evidence, on the contrary, shows increased processing effort. An explanation for the apparent contradiction is proposed, namely that the measured effort accounts for the mismatch between the cognitive and contextual status of new information and its being linguistically presented as presupposed. The fact that processing resources are devoted to repairing the mentioned mismatch is seen as further reducing the attentional resources available for epistemic vigilance and critical evaluation.

Lombardi Vallauri, E. (2021). Presupposition, attention and cognitive load. JOURNAL OF PRAGMATICS, 183, 15-28 [10.1016/j.pragma.2021.06.022].

Presupposition, attention and cognitive load

Lombardi Vallauri, Edoardo
2021-01-01

Abstract

The paper deals with the relation between linguistic presupposition and epistemic vigilance. It proposes evolutionary and cognitive reasons why presuppositions should induce shallower processing, that proves effective in persuasion and manipulation. It shows examples of presuppositions being associated with reduced critical attention from commercial advertising and political propaganda. It summarizes the available experimental verification of this assumption, commenting on the fact that behavioural evidence confirms reduced attention for presupposed contents, while neurophysiological evidence, on the contrary, shows increased processing effort. An explanation for the apparent contradiction is proposed, namely that the measured effort accounts for the mismatch between the cognitive and contextual status of new information and its being linguistically presented as presupposed. The fact that processing resources are devoted to repairing the mentioned mismatch is seen as further reducing the attentional resources available for epistemic vigilance and critical evaluation.
2021
Lombardi Vallauri, E. (2021). Presupposition, attention and cognitive load. JOURNAL OF PRAGMATICS, 183, 15-28 [10.1016/j.pragma.2021.06.022].
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Utilizza questo identificativo per citare o creare un link a questo documento: https://hdl.handle.net/11590/390131
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