•  175
    Speaker trustworthiness: Shall confidence match evidence?
    Philosophical Psychology 37 (1): 102-125. 2024.
    Overconfidence is typically damaging to one’s reputation as a trustworthy source of information. Previous research shows that the reputational cost associated with conveying a piece of false information is higher for confident than unconfident speakers. When judging speaker trustworthiness, individuals do not exclusively rely on past accuracy but consider the extent to which speakers expressed a degree of confidence that matched the accuracy of their claims (their “confidence-accuracy calibratio…Read more
  •  62
    The present study investigated whether humans are more likely to trust people who are coordinated with them. We examined a well-known type of linguistic coordination, lexical entrainment, typically involving the elaboration of “conceptual pacts,” or partner-specific agreements on how to conceptualize objects. In two experiments, we manipulated lexical entrainment in a referential communication task and measured the effect of this manipulation on epistemic and practical trust. Our results showed …Read more
  •  5
    What’s Your Evidence? The Psychological Foundations of the Evaluation of Testimony
    Ars Interpretandi 28 (Testimony and law): 113-128. 2023.
    Given the risks of misinformation, addressees need to calibrate their trust towards communicators effectively. One way to do this is to evaluate the evidence speakers rely on (their evidential warrant) or claim to have (their evidential claims) when providing testimony. We review key findings in experimental psychology and experimental pragmatics to uncover the mechanisms underlying this form of trust calibration. This will ultimately shed light on the psychological foundations of principles tha…Read more
  •  13
    Verbal communication leaves room for interpretative disputes. Speakers can argue about what they mean by their words and negotiate their commitments in conversation. This article examines the deniability of implicitly communicated contents and addresses the question of what makes an act of denial seem more or less plausible to the addressee. I argue that denials bring about a process of reconstruction of the context of interpretation of the speaker's utterance and I illustrate how considerations…Read more
  •  31
    Pragmatics and epistemic vigilance: A developmental perspective
    with Nausicaa Pouscoulous
    Mind and Language 36 (3): 355-376. 2020.
    Any form of overt communication, be it gestural or linguistic, involves pragmatic skills. This article investigates the social–cognitive foundations of pragmatic development from infancy to late childhood and argues that it is driven by, among other things, the emergence of the capacities to assess the communicator's competence (e.g. perceptual access, epistemic states) and honesty. We discuss the implications of this proposal and show how it sheds new light on the developmental trajectory of a …Read more
  •  9
    Good Points - Paolo Casalegno's criticism of some analytic philosophers
    with Carlo Monti
    Rivista Italiana di Filosofia Analitica Junior 2 (1): 124-134. 2011.
  •  51
    Imagination and Convention
    Analysis 77 (2): 449-457. 2017.
    © The Authors 2017. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of The Analysis Trust. All rights reserved. For Permissions, please email: [email protected] Lepore and Stone clearly state, ‘this book is first and foremost a philosophy book – its point is not to settle this or that resolution to a particular empirical issue, or to advocate for a specific theoretical framework of discourse interpretation. It is rather to sharpen intuitions and draw distinctions about language use’.…Read more
  •  24
    Pragmatics and Epistemic Vigilance
    Croatian Journal of Philosophy 15 (2): 183-199. 2015.
    Sperber suggests that competent hearers can deploy sophisticated interpretative strategies in order to cope with deliberate deception or to avoid misunderstandings due to speaker’s incompetence. This paper investigates the cognitive underpinnings of sophisticated interpretative strategies and suggests that they emerge from the interaction between a relevance-guided comprehension procedure and epistemic vigilance mechanisms. My proposal sheds a new light on the relationship between comprehension …Read more