Audience design through social interaction during group discussion

PLoS One. 2013;8(2):e57211. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0057211. Epub 2013 Feb 21.

Abstract

This paper contrasts two accounts of audience design during multiparty communication: audience design as a strategic individual-level message adjustment or as a non-strategic interaction-level message adjustment. Using a non-interactive communication task, Experiment 1 showed that people distinguish between messages designed for oneself and messages designed for another person; consistent with strategic message design, messages designed for another person/s were longer (number of words) than those designed for oneself. However, audience size did not affect message length (messages designed for different sized audiences were similar in length). Using an interactive communication task Experiment 2 showed that as group size increased so too did communicative effort (number of words exchanged between interlocutors). Consistent with a non-strategic account, as group members were added more social interaction was necessary to coordinate the group's collective situation model. Experiment 3 validates and extends the production measures used in Experiment 1 and 2 using a comprehension task. Taken together, our results indicate that audience design arises as a non-strategic outcome of social interaction during group discussion.

Publication types

  • Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

  • Communication
  • Comprehension / physiology*
  • Humans
  • Interpersonal Relations*
  • Sample Size
  • Students / psychology*

Grants and funding

Funding provided by an ARC Discovery grant DP120104237 (http://www.arc.gov.au/). The funder had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.