Michael Schober:
Spatial Dialogue between Partners with
Mismatched Abilities
Abstract
In a laboratory experiment, 29 pairs of participants preselected (without
their knowledge) on the basis of their high or low mental rotation ability
described locations for each other on a series of displays. Individual spatial
abilities substantially affected participants’ choice of spatial perspectives,
and they seemed to subtly judge each other’s abilities within a few moments
of beginning to converse. Speakers with high ability were more likely to
take the perspective of partners with low abilities, essentially encouraging
them to speak egocentrically, and this propensity increased over time, as
they gained further evidence of their partner’s ineptness. People with low
ability were far more likely to provide inept or bizarre descriptions that
weren’t true from anyone’s perspective. Not surprisingly, pairs in which
both partners had poor mental rotation abilities understood each other’s
spatial language more poorly than pairs in which at least one partner had
high mental rotation ability, which seemed to allow pairs to compensate.
The findings raise a number of questions about how individual abilities affect
spatial language use in dialogue, suggesting that a one-size-fits-all theory
may not lead to a full account.
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