Language use has long been understood to be tailored to the intended addressee, a process termed audience design. Audience design is reflected in multiple aspects of language use, including adjustments based on the addressee's knowledge about the topic at hand. In group settings, audience design depends on representations of multiple individuals, each of whom may have different knowledge about the conversational topic. A central question, then, concerns how these representations are encoded and retrieved in multiparty conversation where successful conversation requires keeping track of who knows what. In the present research, we probe the biological memory systems that are involved in this process of multiparty audience design. We present the results of two experiments that compare language use in persons with bilateral hippocampal damage and severe declarative memory impairment (amnesia), and demographically matched neurotypical comparison participants. Participants played a game in which they discussed abstract images with one partner in conversation, and then discussed the images again with the same partner or with a new partner in a three-party conversation. Neurotypical participants' language use reflected newly formed representations of which partner was familiar with which images. Participants with amnesia showed evidence of partner-specific audience design in multiparty conversation but it was attenuated, especially when success required rapid alternations between representations of common ground. The findings suggest partial independence of the formation and use of partner-specific representations from the hippocampal-dependent declarative memory system and highlight the unique contributions of the declarative memory system to flexible and dynamic language use.

长期以来，语言的使用一直被认为是针对目标受众量身定制的，这一过程称为受众设计。受众设计体现在语言使用的多个方面，包括根据受众对当前主题的了解进行调整。在群体环境中，受众设计取决于多个人的代表，每个人可能对对话主题有不同的了解。那么，一个中心问题涉及如何在多方对话中对这些表示进行编码和检索，其中成功的对话需要跟踪谁知道什么。在本研究中，我们探讨了参与多方受众设计过程的生物记忆系统。我们展示了两项实验的结果，这些实验比较了双侧海马损伤和严重陈述性记忆障碍（健忘症）患者的语言使用情况，以及人口统计学上匹配的神经典型对照参与者的语言使用情况。参与者玩了一个游戏，在游戏中他们在对话中与一个伙伴讨论抽象图像，然后在三方对话中与同一伙伴或新伙伴再次讨论这些图像。神经典型参与者的语言使用反映了新形成的关于哪个伙伴熟悉哪些图像的表征。患有失忆症的参与者在多方对话中表现出了针对特定合作伙伴的受众设计的证据，但这种设计的效果被削弱了，特别是当成功需要在共同点的表示之间快速交替时。研究结果表明，伴侣特异性表征的形成和使用部分独立于海马依赖性陈述性记忆系统，并强调了陈述性记忆系统对灵活和动态语言使用的独特贡献。