Measures and mechanisms of common ground: backchannels, conversational repair, and interactive alignmentin free and task-oriented social interactions

TY - CONF

T1 - Measures and mechanisms of common ground: backchannels, conversational repair, and interactive alignmentin free and task-oriented social interactions

AU - Fusaroli, Riccardo

AU - Tylén, Kristian

AU - Madsen, Katrine Garly

AU - Steensig, Jakob

AU - Christiansen, Morten H.

AU - Dingemanse, Mark

PY - 2017

Y1 - 2017

N2 - A crucial aspect of everyday conversational interactions is our ability to establish and maintain common ground. Understanding the relevant mechanisms involved in such social coordination remains an important challenge for cognitive science. While common ground is often discussed in very general terms, different contexts of interaction are likely to afford different coordination mechanisms. In this paper, we investigate the presence and relation of three mechanisms of social coordination–backchannels, interactive alignment and conversational repair –across free and task-oriented conversations.We find significant differences: task-oriented conversations involve higher presence of repair–restricted offers in particular –and backchannel, as well as a reduced level of lexical and syntactic alignment. We find that restricted repair is associated with lexical alignment and open repair with backchannels. Our findings highlight the need to explicitly assess several mechanisms at once and to investigate diverse social activities to understand their role and relations.

AB - A crucial aspect of everyday conversational interactions is our ability to establish and maintain common ground. Understanding the relevant mechanisms involved in such social coordination remains an important challenge for cognitive science. While common ground is often discussed in very general terms, different contexts of interaction are likely to afford different coordination mechanisms. In this paper, we investigate the presence and relation of three mechanisms of social coordination–backchannels, interactive alignment and conversational repair –across free and task-oriented conversations.We find significant differences: task-oriented conversations involve higher presence of repair–restricted offers in particular –and backchannel, as well as a reduced level of lexical and syntactic alignment. We find that restricted repair is associated with lexical alignment and open repair with backchannels. Our findings highlight the need to explicitly assess several mechanisms at once and to investigate diverse social activities to understand their role and relations.

M3 - Paper

T2 - CogSci 2017

Y2 - 26 July 2017 through 29 July 2017

ER -