Fig. 1.

Example pictures from (a) an exposure trial and (b) a test trial. On all trials, participants were shown two pictures that differed in a single way—one was plausible (left panels) and one was implausible (right panels)—and they heard an audio description of one of the pictures. On exposure trials, the referential expressions were phonologically distinct (e.g., “my cat has three little kittens” vs. “my cat has three little hammers”). In contrast, on test trials, the referential expressions differed phonologically in only a single consonant or vowel (e.g., “I had carrots and peas for dinner” vs. “I had carrots and bees for dinner”). For both trial types, participants had to select the picture described by the speaker. Stimuli adapted from images obtained from clipartbest.com.