Perspective taking in conversation: A defense of speaker non-egocentricity

The goal of this paper is twofold. The overarching aim is to address the issue of egocentrism and to argue that conversational participants are generally not egocentric. However, it also secondarily addresses the issue of the appropriate methods to use to study perspective taking in conversation. I argue that we should not rely solely on narrow temporal focus, individualistic methodologies, such as those used in Visual World eye-tracking studies, which tend to look at millisecond snapshots of the behavior of individuals rather than at broad temporal swaths of behavior of dyads (or of larger groups of conversationalists). I also challenge the idea that in referential communication there is a first automatic, egocentric phase of comprehension that is then followed by a conscious and effortful non-egocentric phase.