Evidence for Alignment in a Computer-Mediated Text-Only Environment

Evidence for Alignment in a Computer-Mediated Text-Only Environment Monica A. Riordan (mschpers@memphis.edu) Rick Dale (radale@memphis.edu) Roger J. Kreuz (rkreuz@memphis.edu) Andrew Olney (aolney@memphis.edu) Department of Psychology, 202 Psychology Building, University of Memphis, Memphis, TN 38152 USA Abstract During interaction, people coordinate in both verbal (e.g., syntactically and semantically) and nonverbal (e.g., gestural and prosodic) ways. This alignment has been suggested to be a result of grounding or priming. In both cases, visual cues assist understanding. This study explores how widely and how much participants align in a text-only environment. Forty-two participants debated a topic via Instant Messenger with a confederate. Using length analyses, LIWC, and LSA, results show punctuation and semantic alignment above chance between interlocutors, and an increase in this alignment over time. Affective alignment and alignment in parts of speech are weak, and the nature of the debate nor nonverbal cues affected alignment. These results extend previous theories of verbal alignment to text- only environments in which interlocutors lack visual cues during interaction and propose theoretical implications for alignment. However, lack of nonverbal alignment departs from face-to-face findings, and theoretical implications for such results are suggested. Keywords: alignment; coordination; synchronization; priming; computer-mediated communication Introduction During interaction, people synchronize (Marsh, Richardson, & Schmidt, 2009) or align (Pickering & Garrod, 2004) in a variety of ways. When two people communicate, their levels of linguistic representation align by co-activating similar words, sentence structures, and so on. For example, in classic work by Bock (1986), participants were induced to use the same syntactic structure (among two available) when they were primed by its previous use by a confederate (e.g., active/passive sentences; see also Branigan, Pickering, & Cleland, 2000 and Haywood et al., 2005). This alignment occurs at many verbal levels, including the phonological and syntactic (e.g, Cleland & Pickering, 2003; Giles, Coupland, & Coupland, 1991). In addition to this verbal alignment, several researchers have found nonverbal alignment, including postural alignment (e.g., Shockley, Santana, & Fowler, 2003), alignment in the pitch and rate of speech (Giles, Coupland, & Coupland, 1991) and other bodily movements (e.g., Chartrand & Bargh, 1999). This evidence for alignment has been gleaned from face- to-face human interlocutors. However, the lack of feedback present in text-based communication environments may impact the level of alignment. Clark and Brennan (1990) show that alignment is reached through grounding, or the establishment of mutual knowledge and beliefs, in which interlocutors provide evidence of their understanding (e.g., attentiveness, eye contact) and seek this type of evidence from their conversation partner. The reduction of this feedback in a text-only environment suggests that the process of alignment may be affected. In consideration of this possibility, Brennan (1991) conducted a study in which humans interacted with a computer program and found significant levels of linguistic alignment. Branigan and Pearson (2006) also found syntactic and lexical alignment in an interaction between a computer and a human. The utterances produced by the computer shaped the humans' subsequent utterances. However, it is possible that such alignment could be explained by the expectations the person had regarding the computer's capabilities; the human may have sought alignment as an accommodation to the computer interface in order to establish effective communication. This same alignment may not occur in a text-based environment if these constraints are not expected. The alignment of humans with computers suggests that visual feedback is not necessary for alignment. To account for this finding, a recent prominent theory of alignment proposes that priming is a central mechanism underlying alignment (see Ferreira & Bock, 2006, and Pickering & Garrod, 2004 for review and debate). When two people communicate, their levels of linguistic representation align by co-activating similar words, sentence structures, and so on. In this manner, the lack of visual feedback in text-only environments does not affect alignment. In order to test the persistence of verbal alignment between interlocutors, we designed a task in which two people communicate via text-based Instant Messenger. Not only does this allow us to test for verbal alignment in a text- only environment, but also to look at alignment independent of established methods of feedback (e.g., eye contact, gesture, facial expression). The lack of visual contact between interlocutors in a text-based interaction forces people to establish a way to negotiate understanding and feedback during conversation, the process of grounding that may be responsible for important aspects of alignment (Clark & Brennan, 1990). This process of grounding may be linguistic or nonlinguistic. Several researchers have argued that text-only environments are rich with nonverbal cues of their own.