Trade-offs between informativeness and speed of message delivery in augmentative and alternative communication.

This report is the second in a series of investigations designed to develop a working model identifying the effects of trade-offs between selected conversational maxims on public attitudes toward augmentative and alternative communication (AAC) system users and their communication. In the current study, tradeoffs between the informativeness of a prestored message and its speed of delivery were examined. A total of 96 salesclerks participated. Sixteen scripted, videotaped conversational conditions, involving an AAC customer and a clerk at a checkout counter, were used to manipulate message informativeness and speed of message delivery. Following each assigned viewing, participants completed a questionnaire designed to assess their attitudes toward the AAC user and his or her communication. The conditions involving (a) the quickly delivered message with excessive information, (b) the slowly delivered message with adequate information preceded by a "floorholder," and (c) the slowly delivered message with adequate information without a floorholder were rated higher than (d) the quickly delivered message with inadequate information. There was no main effect for participant or AAC user gender. Implications regarding a model of conversational trade-offs and technological applications are discussed.

[1]  B. A. Wright.  Attitudes and the fundamental negative bias: Conditions and corrections. , 1988 .

[2]  E. Williams.  Experimental Designs Balanced for the Estimation of Residual Effects of Treatments , 1949 .

[3]  E. Schegloff,et al.  A simplest systematics for the organization of turn-taking for conversation , 1974 .

[4]  Margaret L. McLaughlin,et al.  AWKWARD SILENCES: BEHAVIORAL ANTECEDENTS AND CONSEQUENCES OF THE CONVERSATIONAL LAPSE , 1982 .

[5]  M. Horne,et al.  A longitudinal study of disability group acceptance. , 1976, Rehabilitation literature.

[6]  A. Jaworski.  The power of silence , 1992 .

[7]  Z. Šidák.  Rectangular Confidence Regions for the Means of Multivariate Normal Distributions , 1967 .

[8]  R. Ringlaben,et al.  Regular Classroom Teachers' Perceptions of Mainstreaming Effects , 1981, Exceptional children.

[9]  R. Lakoff,et al.  STYLISTIC STRATEGIES WITHIN A GRAMMAR OF STYLE , 1979 .

[10]  John L. Arnott,et al.  A communication system based on scripts, plans, and goals for enabling non-speaking people to conduct telephone conversations , 1995, 1995 IEEE International Conference on Systems, Man and Cybernetics. Intelligent Systems for the 21st Century.

[11]  T. Stephens,et al.  Measures of Regular Classroom Teachers' Attitudes toward Handicapped Children , 1980, Exceptional children.

[12]  D. Jeffery Higginbotham,et al.  Subject selection in AAC research: Decision points , 1995 .

[13]  Kathleen F. McCoy,et al.  Relevance and speed of message delivery trade-offs in augmentative and alternative communication. , 2003, Journal of speech, language, and hearing research : JSLHR.

[14]  H. H. Clark,et al.  Referring as a collaborative process , 1986, Cognition.

[15]  Herbert H. Clark,et al.  Grounding in communication , 1991, Perspectives on socially shared cognition.

[16]  S. Calculator,et al.  Variables influencing perceptions of the communicative competence of an adult augmentative and alternative communication system user. , 1992, Journal of speech and hearing research.

[17]  R. Wyer,et al.  A theory of humor elicitation. , 1992, Psychological review.

[18]  John M. Wiemann,et al.  EXPLICATION AND TEST OF A MODEL OF COMMUNICATIVE COMPETENCE , 1977 .

[19]  David R. Beukelman,et al.  Augmentative and Alternative Communication: Management of Severe Communication Disorders in Children and Adults , 1995 .

[20]  S. Vuchinich,et al.  Elements of Cohesion Between Turns in Ordinary Conversation , 1977 .

[21]  A. Biglan,et al.  The relevance of specific conversational behaviors to ratings of social skill: An experimental analysis , 1981 .

[22]  Ann R. Beck,et al.  Influence of communicative competence and Augmentative and Alternative Communication technique on children's attitudes toward a peer who uses AAC , 2002 .

[23]  Penelope Brown,et al.  Politeness: Some Universals in Language Usage , 1989 .

[24]  Anne O'Connor,et al.  Children's attitudes toward a nonspeaking child using various augmentative and alternative communication techniques , 1993 .

[25]  Deborah H. Gruenfeld,et al.  Semantics and pragmatics of social influence: how affirmations and denials affect beliefs in referent propositions. , 1992, Journal of personality and social psychology.

[26]  Christopher A. Pennington,et al.  An Augmentative Communication Interface Based on Conversational Schemata , 1998, Assistive Technology and Artificial Intelligence.

[27]  H. Grice.  Logic and conversation , 1975 .

[28]  R. Lakoff.  The logic of politeness: or minding your p''s and q''s , 1973 .

[29]  R. Paul,et al.  Narrative development in late talkers: early school age. , 1996, Journal of speech and hearing research.

[30]  A. R. Grayer,et al.  I am not a Crook: Effects of Denials on Perceptions of a Defendant's Guilt, Personality, and Motives , 1994 .

[31]  D. E. Johnson,et al.  Analysis of Messy Data Volume I: Designed Experiments , 1985 .

[32]  Ann R. Beck,et al.  Attitudes of school-aged children toward their peers who use augmentative and alternative communication , 2000 .

[33]  F. Goldman-Eisler.  Psycholinguistics: Experiments in spontaneous speech , 1968 .

[34]  T. Ostrom.  The relationship between the affective, behavioral, and cognitive components of attitude. , 1969 .

[35]  R. Hastie.  Causes and effects of causal attribution , 1984 .