scholarly journals People are Sensitive to Problems in Communication and Use Other-Initiated Repairs to Address Them

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ashley Micklos ◽  
Bradley Walker ◽  
Nicolas Fay
Keyword(s):  
Social Interactions ◽  
Interpersonal Communication ◽  
Information Transfer ◽  
Referential Communication ◽  
Accurate Information ◽  
Geometric Shapes ◽  
Text Chat ◽  
Communication Task ◽  
Different Shapes ◽  
Shape Descriptions

Recent research indicates that interpersonal communication is noisy, and that people exhibit considerable insensitivity to problems in communication. Using a dyadic referential communication task, the goal of which is accurate information transfer, the present study examined the extent to which interlocutors are sensitive problems in communication and use other-initiated repairs (OIRs) to address them. Participants were randomly assigned to dyads (N = 88 participants, or 44 dyads) and attempted to communicate a series of recurring abstract geometric shapes to a partner across a text-chat interface. Participants alternated directing (describing shapes) and matching (interpreting shape descriptions) roles across seventy-two trials of the task. Replicating prior research, over repeated social interactions communication success improved and the shape descriptions became increasingly efficient (indexed by the number of words used to communicate each shape). In addition, confidence in having successfully communicated the different shapes increased over trials. Importantly, matchers were less confident on trials in which communication was unsuccessful, communication success was lower on trials that contained an OIR compared to those that did not contain an OIR, and OIR trials were associated with lower Director confidence. This pattern of results demonstrates that: 1) interlocutors exhibit (a degree of) sensitivity to problems in communication, 2) appropriately use OIRs to address problems in communication, and 3) OIRs signal problems in communication to their partner.

The Relationship between How Much is Said and the Quality of the Utterance: Can Young Children Tell the Difference?

1982 ◽  
Vol 5 (2) ◽  
pp. 229-242
Author(s):  
Susan Sonnenschein
Keyword(s):  
Young Children ◽  
Preliminary Investigation ◽  
Color Pattern ◽  
Referential Communication ◽  
Geometric Shapes ◽  
Message Length ◽  
Communication Task ◽  
The Difference ◽  
The Relationship

This research was a preliminary investigation into why young children give certain types of communications. Previous research had indicated that 5-year-olds are more likely to imitate the length rather than the quality of a speaker model's utterances. Experiment I replicated that finding. Experiment 2 explored whether this was due to young children confounding length with quality and therefore judging any long communication to be adequate. In both studies, 5-year-olds participated in a referential communication task. The stimuli were pictures of geometric shapes differing on color, pattern and size. The results for experiment 2 indicated that message length was not a factor in judging the adequacy of a communication. Discussion focused on other explanations for why young communicators imitate length rather than quality.

Hearing Aid Amplification Reduces Communication Effort of People With Hearing Impairment and Their Conversation Partners

2020 ◽  
Vol 63 (4) ◽  
pp. 1299-1311 ◽  
Author(s):  
Timothy Beechey ◽  
Jörg M. Buchholz ◽  
Gitte Keidser
Keyword(s):  
Hearing Impairment ◽  
Hearing Aid ◽  
Normal Hearing ◽  
Referential Communication ◽  
Hearing Impaired ◽  
Directional Hearing ◽  
Acoustic Environment ◽  
Communication Task ◽  
Acoustic Environments ◽  
The Impact

Objectives This study investigates the hypothesis that hearing aid amplification reduces effort within conversation for both hearing aid wearers and their communication partners. Levels of effort, in the form of speech production modifications, required to maintain successful spoken communication in a range of acoustic environments are compared to earlier reported results measured in unaided conversation conditions. Design Fifteen young adult normal-hearing participants and 15 older adult hearing-impaired participants were tested in pairs. Each pair consisted of one young normal-hearing participant and one older hearing-impaired participant. Hearing-impaired participants received directional hearing aid amplification, according to their audiogram, via a master hearing aid with gain provided according to the NAL-NL2 fitting formula. Pairs of participants were required to take part in naturalistic conversations through the use of a referential communication task. Each pair took part in five conversations, each of 5-min duration. During each conversation, participants were exposed to one of five different realistic acoustic environments presented through highly open headphones. The ordering of acoustic environments across experimental blocks was pseudorandomized. Resulting recordings of conversational speech were analyzed to determine the magnitude of speech modifications, in terms of vocal level and spectrum, produced by normal-hearing talkers as a function of both acoustic environment and the degree of high-frequency average hearing impairment of their conversation partner. Results The magnitude of spectral modifications of speech produced by normal-hearing talkers during conversations with aided hearing-impaired interlocutors was smaller than the speech modifications observed during conversations between the same pairs of participants in the absence of hearing aid amplification. Conclusions The provision of hearing aid amplification reduces the effort required to maintain communication in adverse conditions. This reduction in effort provides benefit to hearing-impaired individuals and also to the conversation partners of hearing-impaired individuals. By considering the impact of amplification on both sides of dyadic conversations, this approach contributes to an increased understanding of the likely impact of hearing impairment on everyday communication.

Partner-Specific Communication Deficits in Individuals With Alzheimer's Disease

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-15
Author(s):  
Eun Jin Paek ◽  
Si On Yoon
Keyword(s):  
Alzheimer’S Disease ◽  
Older Adults ◽  
Alzheimer's Disease ◽  
Referential Communication ◽  
Sorting Task ◽  
Audience Design ◽  
Healthy Older Adults ◽  
Communication Task ◽  
Design Skills ◽  
Referential Expressions

Purpose Speakers adjust referential expressions to the listeners' knowledge while communicating, a phenomenon called “audience design.” While individuals with Alzheimer's disease (AD) show difficulties in discourse production, it is unclear whether they exhibit preserved partner-specific audience design. The current study examined if individuals with AD demonstrate partner-specific audience design skills. Method Ten adults with mild-to-moderate AD and 12 healthy older adults performed a referential communication task with two experimenters (E1 and E2). At first, E1 and participants completed an image-sorting task, allowing them to establish shared labels. Then, during testing, both experimenters were present in the room, and participants described images to either E1 or E2 (randomly alternating). Analyses focused on the number of words participants used to describe each image and whether they reused shared labels. Results During testing, participants in both groups produced shorter descriptions when describing familiar images versus new images, demonstrating their ability to learn novel knowledge. When they described familiar images, healthy older adults modified their expressions depending on the current partner's knowledge, producing shorter expressions and more established labels for the knowledgeable partner (E1) versus the naïve partner (E2), but individuals with AD were less likely to do so. Conclusions The current study revealed that both individuals with AD and the control participants were able to acquire novel knowledge, but individuals with AD tended not to flexibly adjust expressions depending on the partner's knowledge state. Conversational inefficiency and difficulties observed in AD may, in part, stem from disrupted audience design skills.

scholarly journals Mental models accurately predict emotion transitions

2017 ◽  
Vol 114 (23) ◽  
pp. 5982-5987 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mark A. Thornton ◽  
Diana I. Tamir
Keyword(s):  
Social Interactions ◽  
Mental Models ◽  
Social Impact ◽  
Human Mind ◽  
High Accuracy ◽  
Accurate Information ◽  
Emotional States ◽  
State Representation ◽  
Emotion Dynamics ◽  
Accuracy Study

Successful social interactions depend on people’s ability to predict others’ future actions and emotions. People possess many mechanisms for perceiving others’ current emotional states, but how might they use this information to predict others’ future states? We hypothesized that people might capitalize on an overlooked aspect of affective experience: current emotions predict future emotions. By attending to regularities in emotion transitions, perceivers might develop accurate mental models of others’ emotional dynamics. People could then use these mental models of emotion transitions to predict others’ future emotions from currently observable emotions. To test this hypothesis, studies 1–3 used data from three extant experience-sampling datasets to establish the actual rates of emotional transitions. We then collected three parallel datasets in which participants rated the transition likelihoods between the same set of emotions. Participants’ ratings of emotion transitions predicted others’ experienced transitional likelihoods with high accuracy. Study 4 demonstrated that four conceptual dimensions of mental state representation—valence, social impact, rationality, and human mind—inform participants’ mental models. Study 5 used 2 million emotion reports on the Experience Project to replicate both of these findings: again people reported accurate models of emotion transitions, and these models were informed by the same four conceptual dimensions. Importantly, neither these conceptual dimensions nor holistic similarity could fully explain participants’ accuracy, suggesting that their mental models contain accurate information about emotion dynamics above and beyond what might be predicted by static emotion knowledge alone.

scholarly journals Sparse Signature Matrix Optimization for NOMA under Imperfect CSI

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kun Lu ◽  
Hongwen Yang
Keyword(s):  
Iterative Decoding ◽  
Information Transfer ◽  
Multiple Access ◽  
Rapid Development ◽  
Minimum Mean Square Error ◽  
Accurate Information ◽  
Analysis Tool ◽  
Matrix Optimization ◽  
High Spectral Efficiency ◽  
Signature Matrix

Abstract Non-orthogonal multiple access (NOMA) can support the rapid development of the Internet of Things (IoT) with its potential to support high spectral efficiency and massive connectivity. The low-density superposition modulation (LDSM) scheme is one of the NOMA schemes and uses the sparse signature matrix to reduce multiple access interferences (MAI). In order to improve the NOMA system performance in practice, this paper focuses on designing the sparse signature matrix with a large girth for LDSM under imperfect channel state information (CSI). Based on the orthogonal pilot and linear minimum mean square error (LMMSE) estimation, the LDSM optimized by bare-bone particle swarm optimization (BBPSO) algorithm has a larger girth and can gather more accurate information in the process of iterative decoding convergence. An extrinsic information transfer (EXIT) chart analysis is designed for the LDSM-OFDM system as a theoretical analysis tool. The simulation results show that the optimized LDSM outperforms the reference LDSM system, bringing about a 0.5 dB performance gain.

Parents’ Perspectives About Factors Influencing Adherence to Pharmacotherapy for ADHD

2016 ◽  
Vol 21 (2) ◽  
pp. 91-99 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rana Ahmed ◽  
Jacqueline Borst ◽  
Yong C. Wei ◽  
Parisa Aslani
Keyword(s):  
Focus Groups ◽  
Social Interactions ◽  
Sleep Disturbances ◽  
Treatment Initiation ◽  
Positive Impact ◽  
Accurate Information ◽  
Long Term Effects ◽  
Group Discussions ◽  
Factors Influencing

Objective: The aim of the present study was to explore factors influencing parents’ decisions to adhere and persist with ADHD pharmacotherapy in children. Method: Focus groups ( n = 3) were conducted with 16 parents recruited from metropolitan Sydney. Group discussions explored factors impacting on treatment initiation, continuation, and cessation. Focus groups were audio-recorded, transcribed verbatim, and thematically content analyzed. Results: Parents commenced and continued pharmacotherapy due to its positive impact on their child’s behavior. Improvements in the child’s academic performance and social interactions encouraged persistence with therapy. Parents elected to cease therapy after their children experienced side effects including appetite suppression, weight loss, and sleep disturbances. Concerns about long-term effects of ADHD medication use including potential for addiction and growth stunting, in addition to the stigma surrounding ADHD also contributed to parents ceasing treatment. Conclusion: The findings highlight a need for the provision of accurate information about ADHD and its treatments to parents to empower their treatment decisions and promote adherence.

Learning disabled children's conversational competence: responses to inadequate messages

1980 ◽  
Vol 1 (4) ◽  
pp. 387-403 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mavis Donahue ◽  
Ruth Pearl ◽  
Tanis Bryan
Keyword(s):  
Learning Disabled ◽  
Referential Communication ◽  
Social Knowledge ◽  
Disabled Children ◽  
Normal Children ◽  
Response Latencies ◽  
Communication Task ◽  
Conversational Competence

ABSTRACTThis study examined learning disabled children's understanding of conversational rules for initiating the repair of a communicative breakdown. Learning disabled and normal children in grades 1 through 8 played the listener role in a referential communication task requiring them to select referents based on messages varying in informational adequacy. Learning disabled children were less likely to request clarification of inadequate messages and, consequently, made fewer correct referent choices than normal children. Only young learning disabled girls were less able than their normal age-mates to appraise message adequacy. Analyses of response latencies and request type also suggest that the failure to request clarification cannot be attributed solely to linguistic deficits. Results are discussed in terms of the relative contributions of syntactic-semantic ability and social knowledge to conversational competence.

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