We investigated how deictic shifts and memory representation influence production difficulties in reported speech. In Experiment 1, participants read short stories, including a conversation between two protagonists. Participants then recalled the last sentence from the conversation in either direct or indirect speech. When participants had verbatim memory of the to-be-reported utterance, direct speech production was faster than indirect speech if indirect speech production required a deictic shift. If participants had verbatim memory and indirect speech production did not require a deictic shift, direct and indirect speech’s speech latencies were similar. In Experiment 2, we investigated the production difficulties of reported speech when verbatim memory was unavailable to participants. First, participants read short stories. Next, half of the participants completed an intervening task, whereas the other half did not. Last, participants undertook a sentence completion task by filling in a missing word in direct or indirect speech. When participants did not have verbatim memory of to-be-reported utterances, direct speech production was faster than indirect speech if a deictic shift was needed to produce direct speech. These results suggest that production difficulties in reported speech depend on how to-be-reported utterances are represented in memory and whether deictic shifts are required.

Two Dutch directional prepositions (i.e., naar and richting) provide a useful paradigm to study endpoint conceptualization. Experiment 1 adopted a sentence comprehension task and confirmed the linguistic proposal that, when naar was used in motion event descriptions, participants were more certain that the reference object was the goal of the agent than when richting was used. Experiment 2 and Experiment 3 used this linguistic pair to test the effect of two factors (i.e., the actor’s goal and the interlocutor’s status) on endpoint conceptualization via language production tasks. We found significant effects of both factors. First, participants chose naar more often when there was an inference in the referential situation that the reference object was the actor’s goal than when there was no such inference. Second, participants chose richting more often when they were told to describe the referential scenario to a police officer than to a friend. Participants were more cautious with their statements and were less willing to commit themselves to stating the goal of the agent when talking to a police officer than to a friend. The results are discussed in relation to relevant linguistic theories and event theories.

The commentaries on our target article are insightful and constructive. There were some critical notes, but many commentaries agreed with, or even amplified our message. The first section of our response addresses comments pertaining to specific parts of the target article. The second section provides a response to the commentaries' suggestions to make replication mainstream. The final section contains concluding remarks.

Many philosophers of science and methodologists have argued that the ability to repeat studies and obtain similar results is an essential component of science. A finding is elevated from single observation to scientific evidence when the procedures that were used to obtain it can be reproduced and the finding itself can be replicated. Recent replication attempts show that some high profile results – most notably in psychology, but in many other disciplines as well – cannot be replicated consistently. These replication attempts have generated a considerable amount of controversy, and the issue of whether direct replications have value has, in particular, proven to be contentious. However, much of this discussion has occurred in published commentaries and social media outlets, resulting in a fragmented discourse. To address the need for an integrative summary, we review various types of replication studies and then discuss the most commonly voiced concerns about direct replication. We provide detailed responses to these concerns and consider different statistical ways to evaluate replications. We conclude there are no theoretical or statistical obstacles to making direct replication a routine aspect of psychological science.

We observe a tension in the target article as it stresses an integrated gesture-speech system that can nevertheless consist of contradictory representational states, which are reflected by mismatches in gesture and speech or sign. Beyond problems of coherence, this prevents furthering our understanding of gesture-related learning. As a possible antidote, we invite a more dynamically embodied perspective to the stage.

Empirical research has shown that the processing of words and sentences is accompanied by activation of the brain's motor system in language users. The degree of precision observed in this activation seems to be contingent upon (1) the meaning of a linguistic construction and (2) the depth with which readers process that construction. In addition, neurological evidence shows a correspondence between a disruption in the neural correlates of overt action and the disruption of semantic processing of language about action. These converging lines of evidence can be taken to support the hypotheses that motor processes (1) are recruited to understand language that focuses on actions and (2) contribute a unique element to conceptual representation. This article explores the role of this motor recruitment in language comprehension. It concludes that extant findings are consistent with the theorized existence of multimodal, embodied representations of the referents of words and the meaning carried by language. Further, an integrative conceptualization of “fault tolerant comprehension” is proposed.

Perceptual symbol systems form a theoretically plausible alternative to amodal symbol systems. At this point it is unclear whether there is any truly diagnostic empirical evidence to decide between these systems. We outline some possible avenues of research in the domain of language comprehension that might yield such evidence. Language comprehension will be an important arena for tests of the two types of symbol systems.