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COGSCI
2007

The Effect of Information Overlap on Communication Effectiveness

13 years 3 months ago
The Effect of Information Overlap on Communication Effectiveness
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.
Shali Wu, Boaz Keysar
Added 12 Dec 2010
Updated 12 Dec 2010
Type Journal
Year 2007
Where COGSCI
Authors Shali Wu, Boaz Keysar
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