(In)sensitivity to incoherence in human communication

Are People Sensitive to Problems in Communication?

“…It is widely believed that people are sensitive to problems in communication and use OIRs to address them (Jefferson, 1987;Sacks et al, 1974;Schegloff et al, 1977;Sidnell, 2011). This view is challenged by recent studies indicating that interlocutors exhibit considerable insensitivity to incoherency in conversation (Galantucci & Roberts, 2014;Galantucci et al, 2018;Roberts et al, 2016), a finding consistent with change blindness studies (Simons & Rensink, 2005). Following De Ruiter and Albert (2017), we adopted a mixed method approach that combined the experimental method with indepth qualitative text analysis to examine interlocutor sensitivity to problems in communication.…”

“…Other-initiated repairs are widely thought to signal trouble and address problems in communication (Schegloff, 2000;Sidnell, 2011). However, recent research casts doubt on this, arguing instead that communication is noisy and error prone, and that interlocutors exhibit considerable insensitivity to problems in communication (Galantucci & Roberts, 2014;Galantucci et al, 2018;Roberts et al, 2016; see also the literature on change blindness; Simons & Rensink, 2005). Using a referential communication task, the goal of which is accurate information transfer, we show that matchers were less confident on trials where communication was unsuccessful, and that communication success was lower on trials that contained an OIR compared to those that did not contain on OIR.…”

“…In this study, the goal of communication was accurate information transfer, whereas in other studies the goal is predominantly social in nature (cf. Galantucci & Roberts, 2014 [though Study 1 here is an exception]; Roberts et al, 2016). Doing reference is a ubiquitous aspect of everyday interpersonal communication (Clark & Bangerter, 2004;Krauss & Fussell, 1996;Sacks & Schegloff, 1979).…”

“…This was examined in a series of studies in which communicative incoherence was introduced into dyadic conversations. Communicating remotely via a text–chat interface, interacting pairs of participants’ text–chat entries were surreptitiously swapped with those produced by another participant engaged in a separate and unrelated conversation (Galantucci & Roberts, ), or they were replaced with a pre‐determined message that introduced conversational incoherence (Roberts, Langstein, & Galantucci, ). In each case, most participants failed to notice the incoherent topic change.…”

Linguistic Convergence to Observed Versus Expected Behavior in an Alien‐Language Map Task

“…However, it is relatively simple in such experiments to have the server edit messages in‐transit, giving experimenters control over how participants' language appears to other participants, while letting them believe that they are unconstrained (cf. Galantucci & Roberts, 2014; Mills, 2011; Roberts, Langstein, & Galantucci, 2016). This is the approach we took in our study, and it has several advantages.…”