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Related Experiment Videos

Just how aligned are interlocutors' representations?

Michael F Schober1

  • 1Department of Psychology, F330, New School for Social Research, New York, NY 10003 schober@newschool.edu http://homepage.newschool.edu/~schober.

The Behavioral and Brain Sciences
|February 5, 2008
PubMed
Summary
This summary is machine-generated.

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Even when people think they understand each other in conversation, their mental representations may not align. This highlights the need for detailed models of individual and contextual differences in dialogue.

Area of Science:

  • Cognitive Science
  • Psychology
  • Linguistics

Background:

  • Effective communication relies on shared understanding between conversational partners.
  • Previous research often assumes alignment when interlocutors report successful comprehension.

Purpose of the Study:

  • To investigate the degree of representational alignment between conversational partners.
  • To explore the implications for psychological models of dialogue.

Main Methods:

  • Conducted a series of experiments using surveys about facts and behaviors.
  • Analyzed data to assess the alignment of participants' mental representations.

Main Results:

  • Conversational partners' internal representations are often less aligned than perceived, even after apparent successful communication.

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  • Self-reported understanding does not guarantee accurate or shared mental models.

    • Conclusions:

    • Current models of dialogue may oversimplify the complexity of shared understanding.
    • Future research must account for significant individual and contextual variability in dialogue processing.