Collaborative model

In psycholinguistics, the collaborative model (or conversational model) is a theory for explaining how speaking and understanding work in conversation, specifically how people in conversation coordinate to determine definite references.

The model, initially proposed in 1986 by psycholinguists Herb Clark and Deanna Wilkes-Gibbs, and supported by an experiment with Tangram figures described below, asserts that speakers and listeners in a conversation act collaboratively, moment-by-moment in establishing meaning. In this model it is suggested that the speaker and listener must mutually accept that the listener has understood(or appeared to understand) the speaker's utterances before the conversation can progress. This back and forth process of collaborative understanding progresses through a process of Presentation and Acceptance.

In this ongoing process, X presents a noun phrase to Y in order to establish what it is A is referring to. To initiate the referential process, the speaker uses one of at least six types of noun phrases, including the elementary noun phrase, the episodic noun phrase, the installment noun phrase, the provisional noun phrase, the dummy noun phrase, and the proxy noun phrase. Once this presentation is made, Y must accept it either through presupposing acceptance(i.e. letting X continue uninterrupted) or asserting acceptance (i.e. through a continuer such as "yes", okay", or head knod), and X and Y must mutually recognize that acceptance. In this process, presentation and acceptance goes back and forth, and some utterances can simultaneously be both presentations and acceptances. This model also posits that conversationalists strive for minimum collaborative effort by making references based more on permanent properties than temporary properties and by refining perspective on referents through simplification and narrowing .

Pre-History

The collaborative model finds its roots in Grice's cooperative principle and four Gricean maxims, theories which prominently established the idea that conversation is a collaborative process between speaker and listener.

However, until the Clark/Wilkes-Gibbs study, the prevailing theory in explaining how participants in a conversation speak and understand was the literary model(or autonomous model or traditional model). This model likened the process of a speaker establishing reference to an author writing a book to distant readers. In the literary model, the speaker is the one who retains complete control and responsibility over the course of referent determination. The listener, in this theory, simply hears and understands the definite description as if they were reading it and, if successful, figures out the identity of the referent on their own.

It wasn't until the work of D.R. Olson in 1970 that a psycholinguistic researcher suggested the possibility that the process of establishing reference had a collaborative element and was not strictly autonomous. Olson, while still holding to the literary model, suggested that speakers select the words they do based on context and what they believe the listener will understand.

Clark and Wilkes-Gibbs

The paper produced by this duo in 1986 criticized the literary model and instead presented an opposing process of reference establishment that they called the collaborative model.

The pair conducted an experiment to support their theory and further determine how the acceptance process worked.

The experiment consisted of two students, seated at tables separated by an opaque screen. On the tables in front of each student were a series of Tangram figures arranged in different orders. One student, called the director, was charged with getting the other student, called the matcher, to accurately match his configuration of figures through conversation alone. This process was to be repeated 5 additional times by the same students, playing the same roles.

The collaborative model they proposed allowed them to make several predictions about what would happen. They predicted that it would take the two subjects many more words to establish reference the first time, as they would need to use nonstandard noun phrases that required back and forth collaboration to determine which figures were being talked about. Later references to the same figures, they hypothesized, would take shorter amounts of words, because they could rely more often on established standard noun phrases to refer and because at that point definite reference had been mutually established.

The results of the study confirmed many of their beliefs, and outlined some of the processes of collaborative reference, including establishing the types of noun phrases used in presentation, and their frequency.

Other supporting studies

Subsequent studies affirmed many of Clark and Wilkes-Gibbs' theories. These included a study by Clark and Michael Schober in 1989 that dealt with overhearers and contrasting how well they understand compared to direct addressees. In the literary model, overhearers would be expected to understand as well as addressees, while in the collaborative model, overhearers would be expected to do worse, since they are not part of the collaborative process and the speaker is not concerned with making sure anyone but the addressee understands.

The study conducted by the pair mimicked the Clark/Wilkes-Gibbs study, but included a silent overhearer as part of the process. The speaker and addressee were allowed to converse, while the overhearer attempted to arrange his figures according to what the speaker was saying. In different versions of this study, overhearers had access to a tape recording of the speaker's directions, while in another they simply all sat in the same room.

The study found that overhearers had significantly more difficulty than addressees in both experiments, therefore, according to the researchers, lending credence to the collaborative model.

Opposing viewpoints

The literary model described above still stands as a directly opposing viewpoint to the collaborative model. Subsequent studies also sought to point out weaknesses in the theory. One study, by Brown and Dell, took issue with the aspect of the theory that suggests that speakers have particular listeners in mind when determining reference. Instead, they suggested, speakers have generic listeners in mind. This egocentric theory proposed that people's estimates of another's knowledge are biased towards their own and that early syntactic choices may be made without regard to the addressees' needs, while beliefs about the addressees knowledge did not affect utterance choices until later on, usually in the form of repairs.

Another study, in 2002 by Barr and Keysar, also criticized the particular listener view and partner-specific reference. In the experiment, addresses and speakers established definite references for a series of objects on a wall. Then, another speaker entered, using the same references. The theory was that, if the partner-specific view of establishing reference was correct, the addressee would be slower to identify objects(as measured by eye movement) out of confusion because the reference used had been established with another speaker. They found this not to be the case, in fact, reaction time was similar.

References

• Barr, D. & Keysar, B. (2002). "Anchoring and Comprehensionin linguistic precedents." Journal of Memory and Language, 46, 391-418.
• Clark, H.H., & Wilkes-Gibbs, D. (1986). "Referring as a collaborative process." Cognition, 22, 1-39.
• Olson, D. R. (1970). "Language and thought: Aspects of a cognitive theory of semantics." Psychological Review, 77, 257-273.
• Schober, M. F., & Clark, H.H. (1989). "Understanding by addressees and overhearers." Cognitive Psychology, 21, 211-232.