Abstract

In a collaborative view of communication, the meaning of a message is determined not solely by words and syntax, but rather is negotiated by conversational partners using words and syntax. This collaborative nature has been demonstrated by research on the increased efficiency (Hupet & Chantraine, 1992) and the adaptive behavior (Giles, Mulac, Bradac, & Johnson, 1987) of communicating pairs, but these two lines of research have never been explicitly related. This dissertation combines and extends these lines of research with empirical results showing that adaptively matching word use can increase communication efficiency and also gives an ACT-R (Anderson & Lebiere, 1998) modeling account of the processes involved.