The Effect of Information Overlap on Communication Effectiveness

Cognitive Science 31 (1):169-181 (2007)
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Abstract

It makes sense that the more information people share, the better they communicate. To evaluate the effect of knowledge overlap on the effectiveness of communication, participants played a communication game where the “director” identified objects to the “addressee”. Pairs either shared information about most objects' names (high overlap), or about the minority of objects' names (low overlap). We found that high-overlap directors tended to use more names than low overlap directors. High overlap directors also used more names with objects whose names only they knew, thereby confusing their addressees more often than low-overlap directors. We conclude that while sharing more knowledge can be beneficial to communication overall, it can cause communication to be locally ineffective. Sharing more information reduces communication effectiveness precisely when there is an opportunity to inform—when people communicate information only they themselves know.

Other Versions

reprint Wu, Shali; Keysar, Boaz (2007) "The Effect of Information Overlapon Communication Effectiveness". Cognitive Science: A Multidisciplinary Journal 30(1):169-181

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References found in this work

Using Language.Herbert H. Clark - 1996 - Cambridge University Press.
Rational choice and the structure of the environment.Herbert A. Simon - 1956 - Psychological Review 63 (2):129-138.
Definite Knowledge and Mutual Knowledge.Herbert H. Clark & Catherine R. Marshall - 1981 - In Aravind K. Joshi, Bonnie L. Webber & Ivan A. Sag (eds.), Elements of Discourse Understanding. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. pp. 10–63.

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