Data and code for: Ad hoc conventions generalize to new referents

Access this dataset on Dryad

All data and analysis code are in tangrams-ref-main.zip; this README documents its full contents. Unzipping produces data/, analyses/, and experiments/ as described below.

Two participants play a tangram reference game over abstract shapes. Each trial, the speaker sees a designated target and describes it; the listener reads the description and clicks the image they think is the target. Neither sees the other's screen.

Every game runs three phases:

Phase	Name	Trials/game	Interaction	Measures
1	pre	40 (20 per player, alone)	none	Baseline description per tangram, before partner contact
2	interactive	30 (5 blocks × 6)	free bidirectional chat, roles swap	Convention formation
3	post	20	one speaker utterance, no reply	Whether conventions transfer to new referents

A phase-3 target was either discussed in phase 2 (repeated) or is a new tangram from the same visual thread (control) — threads being families of visually similar shapes. Main experiment: 302 participants, 151 games, 13,590 trials. Two earlier pilots (60 and 59 games) are also included.

Files

data/                 full_data.csv, demographics.csv, thread_contexts.csv
analyses/             analysis.qmd, pilot1.qmd, pilot2.qmd
  data/               processed tables consumed by the notebooks
experiments/          web experiment source (Empirica/Meteor); see experiments/README.md

Conventions

Tangrams are named by their KiloGram file name, e.g. page7-40.svg; some columns drop the .svg. The 1,016 SVGs are in experiments/experiment/public/tangrams/.

Identifiers are arbitrary labels carrying no participant information: games G### (pilots P1G###/P2G###), rounds R##### (P1R#####/P2R#####), main-experiment participants integers 0–301, pilot participants P1-### / P2-###. The main experiment and the two pilots each recruited a distinct set of people, so the three participant namespaces never overlap and must not be joined to one another; demographics.csv covers the main experiment only.

Missing data is always an empty cell (NA in R, NaN in pandas) and is structural; the reason is noted per variable below. No other missing-data codes.

List-valued cells hold a Python list literal as text, e.g. "['page7-40.svg', 'page8-8.svg']"; parse with ast.literal_eval.

Similarity columns are cosine similarities unless stated. jaccard_index is word overlap (0–1). snd_value is Shape Naming Divergence (0–1, higher = harder to name), from KiloGram.

Several processed files carry an unnamed leading column (Unnamed: 0 or a blank header) — a pandas row index; ignore it.

---

data/full_data.csv

Main experiment, one row per trial per speaker. 13,590 rows = 151 games × 90 trials (40 + 30 + 20).

Variable	Type / units	Description
game_id	G###	Game (dyad). 151 unique.
configuration_file	string	JSON defining the game's trial sequence; see experiments/experiment/public/games/.
phase	1–3	1 = pre, 2 = interactive, 3 = post.
round_id	R#####	Round. 7,550 unique — a phase-1 round is shared by both players.
trial_index	integer 0–51	Position within the game.
block	0–4, else empty	Repetition block in phase 2. Empty in phase 1; always 0.0 in phase 3 (no block structure).
target	string	Tangram the speaker had to describe.
snd_value	0–1	Shape Naming Divergence of the target.
snd_class	low/high	low if snd_value <= 0.85.
chat_mode	string, else empty	Empty in phase 1; switch-bidirectional in phase 2 (both may write, roles alternate); single-utterance-unidirectional in phase 3 (one message, no reply).
speaker_id	0–301	Speaker; joins to demographics.csv:participant_id.
listener_id	0–301, else empty	Listener; empty in phase 1, which has none.
context_id	integer	The 10-tangram context; joins to thread_contexts.csv. 150 of 155 contexts occur.
context	list of strings	The 10 tangrams displayed, including the target.
description	string or list	Speaker's text. Plain string in phases 1 and 3; in phase 2 a list holding the trial's full chat in order.
time_to_message	seconds, or list	Trial onset → message sent. A list in phase 2, one entry per message.
sec_until_click	seconds, else empty	Message → listener click. Empty in phase 1 and on timed-out trials.
response	string, else empty	Tangram clicked. Empty in phase 1 and on timed-out trials (75 in phase 2, 437 in phase 3).
correct	True/False, else empty	response == target. Empty wherever response is empty.

data/demographics.csv

The 302 main-experiment participants, one row each; reduced and generalized for public release (see Human subjects data). Pilot participants are not included.

Variable	Type	Description
participant_id	0–301	Arbitrary number, not derived from personal information. Joins to speaker_id/listener_id in full_data.csv and player_id in shepard_pairs*.csv.
age_range	categorical	18-24, 25-34, 35-44, 45-54, 55+, or NA. Banded and top-coded, not exact age.
sex	Male/Female/NA	NA covers both "prefer not to say" and unavailable values.
country_of_residence	United Kingdom/United States	Residence during the study.

Counts: 164 UK / 138 US; 163 male, 138 female, 1 NA; ages 18-24 (37), 25-34 (95), 35-44 (79), 45-54 (46), 55+ (43), NA (2). All participants were English speakers.

data/thread_contexts.csv

Stimulus design. 1,550 rows = 155 contexts × 10 tangrams.

Variable	Type	Description
context_id	0–154	Joins to full_data.csv:context_id.
thread_id	0–9	The visual-similarity thread the context is drawn from.
pre_post_A	string	First member of this slot's pre/post comparison pair.
pre_post_B	string	Second member of that pair.
interactive	string	Tangram used in the interactive phase for this slot.

Read the three tangram columns across a context's 10 rows to reconstruct which shapes were paired for the pre/post measure and which were discussed interactively.

---

analyses/data/ — processed tables

Derived from data/full_data.csv and used directly by the notebooks. Supplied ready-made so the analyses re-run without recomputing embeddings.

clean_no_discourse.csv — interactive trials, cleaned

4,449 rows. Phase-2 trials, minus those whose chat was purely discourse management.

Variable	Type / units	Description
game_id	G###	Game.
block	0–4	Repetition block.
target, response	string	Target tangram; tangram clicked.
correct	True/False, else empty	Empty on 4 timed-out trials.
controlled	True/False	True = control target (not repeated across phases), False = repeated. analysis.qmd recodes this to condition (control/repeated).
snd_value, snd_class	0–1; low/high	SND of the target, and its binarization.
sec_until_click	seconds	Message → listener click.
speaker_desc	list of strings	All speaker messages this trial.
listener_desc	list of strings	All listener messages (empty list if none).
speaker_len, listener_len, total_len	words	Word counts of the above, and their sum.
chat_len	messages	Messages exchanged this trial.
redacted_speaker_len, redacted_listener_len, redacted_total_len, redacted_chat_len	words; messages	The four counts above, recomputed on the redacted text (see Human subjects data). Equal to the originals except on trials whose text changed.

pre_post.csv — pre/post description similarity

2,948 rows = 1,474 tangram pairs × 2 phases. The central test of generalization.

Variable	Type / units	Description
phase	pre/post	Descriptions from phase 1 or phase 3.
pair-id	integer	Tangram pair; appears once as pre, once as post.
game	G###	Game.
tangrams	list of 2 strings	The pair, with .svg.
tangram_A, tangram_B	string	The two tangrams, without extension.
p1_description, p2_description	string	Descriptions given for tangram_A and tangram_B this phase.
similarity	cosine	Text-embedding similarity of the two descriptions. Main dependent measure.
is_control	True/False	True = control (non-repeated) pair.
tangram1_snd, tangram2_snd	0–1	SND of each pair member.
prepost_avg_snd	0–1	Mean SND of the pair.
interactive_phase_tangram	string	Same-thread tangram actually discussed in phase 2.
interactive_phase_snd	0–1	Its SND.
thread_avg_snd	0–1	Mean SND across the thread.
thread_id	0–9	Visual-similarity thread.
bin	0–9	Design bin the context was sampled into (equals thread_id here).
context_id	integer	Joins to thread_contexts.csv.
sim_A_interactive, sim_B_interactive	cosine	Image similarity of tangram_A / tangram_B to the interactive-phase tangram.
avg_sim_AB_interactive	cosine	Mean of the two.
jaccard_index	0–1	Word overlap between the two descriptions.

shepard_pairs.csv — phase-2 vs. phase-3 pairs

2,988 rows. Relates description similarity to visual similarity (a Shepard-style generalization gradient).

Variable	Type / units	Description
player_id	0–301	Participant; 301 of 302 appear.
is_same_thread	True/False	Whether the two tangrams share a thread. Balanced, 1,494 each.
phase2_image, phase2_text	string	Tangram described in phase 2, and its description.
phase3_image, phase3_text	string	Tangram described in phase 3, and its description.
phase2_thread, phase3_thread	list of strings	The thread each image belongs to.
image_sim	cosine	Visual-embedding similarity of the two images.
text_sim	cosine	Text-embedding similarity of the two descriptions.

shepard_pairs_pixsim.csv

Same 2,988 rows and columns as shepard_pairs.csv (player_id uses the same numbering), plus three model-free image measures for comparison against image_sim:

Variable	Type / units	Description
jaccard_index	0–1	Word overlap between phase2_text and phase3_text.
pixel_sim	0–1	Pixel-overlap similarity of the two rendered tangrams.
pixel_corr	−1–1	Pearson correlation of the two images' pixel values.

block_sim_ada_jaccard.csv — convergence across blocks

596 rows = 149 games × 4 consecutive block pairs.

Variable	Type / units	Description
game_id	G###	Game.
blocks	(n,n+1)	Blocks compared: (0,1), (1,2), (2,3), (3,4).
ada_cos_sim	cosine	Text-embedding similarity between the two blocks' descriptions.
jaccard_index	0–1	Word overlap between them.

voting_text_embed_similarity.csv — human validation of text similarity

1,474 rows. Annotators judged which of two description pairs was more similar; compared against three embedding models.

Variable	Type / units	Description
key	string	<game_id>-<tangram_A>-<tangram_B>, e.g. G133-page2-21-page7-10. Tangram names themselves contain hyphens.
tangram_A, tangram_B	string	The pair judged.
ori_pre, ori_post	string	The two phase-1 / phase-3 descriptions, joined by |.
controlled_thread	True/False	Whether this is a control thread.
ada_pre_sim, ada_post_sim	cosine	Similarity from OpenAI ada text embeddings.
clip_pre_sim, clip_post_sim	cosine	Same, CLIP text embeddings.
sbert_pre_sim, sbert_post_sim	cosine	Same, Sentence-BERT.
pre_sim, post_sim	cosine	Values used downstream (ada).
gt, eq, lt	vote counts	Annotators judging the post pair more / equally / less similar than the pre pair. Blank for 2 items with no votes.
human_judgement	−1/0/1, else empty	Majority verdict: 1 = post more similar, 0 = equal, -1 = less. Empty for 27 items with no majority. Modeled as an ordered factor.
ada_diff, clip_diff, sbert_diff	numeric	post_sim − pre_sim per model — the model's analogue of human_judgement.

voting_image_embed_similarity.csv — human validation of image similarity

1,494 rows. Annotators compared two image pairs on visual similarity.

Variable	Type / units	Description
key	string, 20 chars	Arbitrary annotation-item key. Not linked to any participant.
pair0_phase2_image, pair0_phase3_image	string	The first image pair shown.
pair1_phase2_image, pair1_phase3_image	string	The second image pair shown.
pair0_image_sim, pair1_image_sim	cosine	Image-embedding similarity of each pair.
gt, eq, lt	vote counts	Votes that pair 0 was more / equally / less similar than pair 1.
human_judgement	−1/0/1, else empty	Majority verdict. Empty for 36 items with no majority.
sim_diff	numeric	pair0_image_sim − pair1_image_sim.

pilot1_data.csv, pilot2_data.csv

1,800 rows (60 games) and 2,360 rows (59 games). Single-phase pilots, both single-utterance-unidirectional only, each run with its own distinct set of participants. Columns match full_data.csv except:

Variable	Type / units	Description
game_id, round_id	P1G###/P2G###, P1R#####/P2R#####	Pilot-specific identifiers.
speaker_id, listener_id	P1-### / P2-###	Pilot participants (120 in pilot 1, 118 in pilot 2), numbered separately per pilot. No pilot participant took part in the other pilot or in the main experiment.
sec_until_press	seconds	Time until the speaker began typing.
sec_until_click	(n,)	Seconds until the listener clicked, as a 1-tuple literal — strip parentheses and trailing comma.
description_len	words	Word count of description.
redacted_description_len	words	description_len recomputed on the redacted text (see Human subjects data).
controlled	True/False	Control vs. repeated target.

---

Software and workflow

Analyses are Quarto notebooks in R. Render with quarto render analyses/analysis.qmd or run the chunks in RStudio; paths resolve via the here package, so run from the repository root.

Notebook	Reads	Covers
analysis.qmd	clean_no_discourse, pre_post, shepard_pairs, shepard_pairs_pixsim, block_sim_ada_jaccard, voting_text_embed_similarity	All main results: convention formation (accuracy, description length, response time, utterance similarity), pre/post generalization, similarity-gradient models, human-vs-embedding validation
pilot1.qmd, pilot2.qmd	pilot1_data, pilot2_data	The two pilots

R packages: tidyverse, here, ggthemes, tidyboot, lme4, lmerTest, brms. brms needs a Stan toolchain and is the slowest step. Embedding-derived columns (ada_*, clip_*, sbert_*, image_sim, similarity) were computed ahead of time, so re-running needs no API access or GPU.

The experiment is a Meteor app on the Empirica framework — experiments/experiment/ (main) and experiments/pilot/, each with client/, server/, and public/. Setup and deployment are in experiments/README.md. Under public/: tangrams/ holds the 1,016 stimulus SVGs; games/ holds 310 JSON files (ref2_pilot5_binned_threads_<context_id>_<phase>.json, matching full_data.csv:configuration_file) that predefine each trial's images, target, block, per-player ordering, roles, and chat mode; games/old_games/ holds superseded configurations not used by the released data; packages/meteor-empirica-core/ is a vendored third-party copy of Empirica, included so the app builds reproducibly.

Tangram stimuli and the snd_value norms come from the KiloGram dataset.

Human subjects data

Participants were adults recruited online. All consented to take part and to public release of their de-identified data. No minors took part (minimum age 18). This release contains no direct identifiers. The de-identification procedure was:

1. Platform identifiers removed. Recruitment-platform accounts were never carried into the release; each participant has an arbitrary label not derived from personal information and not reversible (0–301 for the main experiment, P1-### / P2-### for the pilots, numbered separately because the three studies recruited distinct people).
2. Internal database identifiers replaced. The Empirica/Meteor server's record ids for every game, round, and player were replaced with arbitrary labels (G001, R00001, …), so nothing traces back to the original experiment server.
3. Indirect identifiers limited to three — age_range, sex, country_of_residence. Ethnicity, country of birth, nationality, language, student status, and employment status were removed.
4. Age generalized into bands, top-coded at 55+ so no older participant is isolated.
5. Free text screened for names, contact details, locations, ages, and self-descriptions. One message where a participant volunteered their age was found; it is not part of this release.
6. Free text redacted for public release. Utterances carrying crude or sexual content, or that were wholly conversational rather than descriptive — greetings and sign-offs, pleasantries, task and platform commentary, demographic probes, requests for a description, and filler — were removed; where such a remark shared an utterance with a real shape description, only the remark was cut and the description left as typed. One direct identifier, a personal name, is marked [redacted]. REDACTION_LOG.md gives the counts by category and redaction_changelog.tsv the cell-by-cell audit trail.

Retained free-text fields (description, speaker_desc, listener_desc, phase2_text, p1_description, and similar) are short referring expressions for abstract shapes — "weird 6", "an unlocked padlock". They are the dataset's primary scientific content and, having been screened as above, carry no information about participants.

Access to the full dataset. What is published here is the de-identified public release. The full dataset may be available to qualified researchers upon request to the corresponding author, subject to appropriate review and any applicable data-use requirements.