Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society

A long-standing question in language understanding iswhether pragmatic inferences are effortful or whether theyhappen seamlessly without measurable cognitive effort. Wehere measure the strength of particularized pragmatic infer-ences in a setting with high vs. low cognitive load. Cognitiveload is induced by a secondary dot tracking task. If this type ofpragmatic inference comes at no cognitive processing cost, in-ferences should be similarly strong in both the high and the lowload condition. If they are effortful, we expect a smaller effectsize in the dual tasking condition. Our results show that partic-ipants who have difficulty in dual tasking (as evidenced by in-correct answers to comprehension questions) exhibit a smallerpragmatic effect when they were distracted with a secondarytask in comparison to the single task condition. This findingsupports the idea that pragmatic inferences are effortful.