Effects of Communication Failure on Speaker and Listener Behavior

Abstract

Thirty pairs of college students communicated over a microphone-earphone link to solve problems that required them to exchange information about ambiguous line drawings. Speakers described designs for visually separated listeners who attempted to choose matching stimuli from arrays. The listeners' choices and changes in the speakers' descriptions over a series of trials were studied as a function of variations in an experimentally induced communication failure (distortion of the speakers' descriptions). Tape recordings were made of the speakers' descriptions and verbatim protocols were constructed. Analysis of the tape recordings and protocols revealed that speakers modified their verbal behavior significantly when listeners made errors. Speakers used three main strategies to cope with the distortion: (1) they gave longer descriptions, (2) they talked slower, and (3) they used more redundant speech.