Elements of theory
Grounding in conversation
Grounding in communication theory has described conversation as a form of collaborative action. While grounding in communication theory has been applied to mediated communication, the theory primarily addresses face-to-facePhases in grounding
The parties engaging in grounding exchange information over what they do or do not understand over the course of a communication and they will continue to clarify concepts until they have agreed on grounding criterion. There are generally two phases in grounding. # Presenting utterance – speaker presents utterance to addressee # Accepting utterance – addressee accepts utterance by providing evidence of understanding According to this theory, mere utterance qualifies as presentation in conversation whereas contribution to conversation demands both utterance and assurance of mutual understanding. The presentation phase can become complex when meanings are embedded or repairs are made to utterances. An example of a repair is "Do you and your husband have a car," but rather the messier, "now, – um do you and your husband have a j-car". The acceptance phase often clarifies any ambiguities with grounding. For example: ::''Presentation phase:'' ::::Alan: Now, – um do you and your husband have a j-car ::''Acceptance phase:'' ::::Barbara: – have a car? ::::Alan: Yeah ::::Barbara: No The acceptance phase is completed once Barbara indicates that the answer is "no" and Alan accepts it as a valid answer.Evidence in conversation
Grounding theory identifies three common types of evidence in conversation: 'acknowledgements, relevant next turn, and continued attention. ''Acknowledgements'' refer toAnticipation of what a partner knows
There are three main factors that allow speakers to anticipate what a partner knows. #Community co-membership: Members of a group with knowledge in a particular field could use technical jargon when communicating within the group, whereas communicating outside of the group would require them to use layman terms. #Linguistic co-presence: A party in a conversation can use a pronoun to refer to someone previously mentioned in the conversation. #Physical co-presence: If the other parties are also present physically, one could point to an object within their physical environment. Shared visual information also aids anticipation of what a partner knows. For example, when responding to an instruction, performing the correct action without any verbal communication provides an indication of understanding, while performing the wrong action, or even failing to act, can signal misunderstanding. Findings from the paper (Using Visual Information for Grounding and Awareness in Collaborative Tasks), supports previous experiments and show evidence that collaborative pairs perform quicker and more accurately when they share a common view of a workspace. The results from the experiment showed that the pairs completed the task 30–40% faster when they were given shared visual information. The value of this information, however, depended on the features of the task. Its value increased when the task objects were linguistically complex and not part of the pairs‟ shared lexicon. However, even a small delay to the transmission of the visual information severely disrupted its value. Also, the ones accepting the instructions were seen to increase their spoken contribution when those giving the instructions do not have shared visual information. This increase in activity is due to the fact that it is easier for the former to produce the information rather than for the ones giving the instruction to continuously ask questions to anticipate their partners' understanding. Such a phenomenon is predicted by the grounding theory, where it is said that since communication costs are distributed among the partners, the result should shift to the method that would be the most efficient for the pair.Least collaborative effort
The theory of least collaborative effort asserts that participants in a contribution try to minimize the total effort spent on that contribution – in both the presentation and acceptance phases. In exact, every participant in a conversation tries to minimize the total effort spent in that interactional encounter.Bethan L. Davies, Least Collaborative Effort or Least Individual Effort: Examining the Evidence The ideal utterances are informative and brief. Participants in conversation refashion referring expressions and decrease conversation length. When interactants are trying to pick out difficult to describe shapes from a set of similar items, they produce and agree on an expression which is understood and accepted by both and this process is termed refashioning. The following is an example from Clark & Wilkes-Gibbs,Clark & Wilkes-Gibbs,Costs to grounding change
The lack of one of these characteristics generally forces participants to use alternative grounding techniques, because the costs associated with grounding change. There is often a trade-off between the costs- one cost will increase as another decreases. There is also often a correlation between the costs. The following table highlights several of the costs that can change as the medium of communication changes.Grounding in machine-mediated communication
Choice of medium
Clark and Brennan's theory acknowledges the impact of medium choice on successful grounding. According to the theory,Media constraints on grounding
Clark and Brennan identify eight constraints mediated communication places on communicating parties. # Copresence: Otherwise known as colocation. Group members are in the same physical location. If group members are not able to share the same physical environment, they cannot use the ability to see and hear and interact with what their partner is interacting with, thus slowing down the grounding process. # Visibility: Group members can see each other. Though video-conferencing allows groups to see each other's faces, it does not allow groups to see what each other are doing like copresence does. # Audibility: Groups can hear each other speaking. When groups are face-to-face they can take into account intonation and timing when coming to understandings or making decisions. Textual media like email and instant messages removes both of these aspects, and voice messages lack the timing aspect, thus making it difficult for the rest of the group to respond in a timely manner. # Contemporality: Group members are receiving information as it is produced by other group members. If a message is only received by one partner after a delay, their reaction to the message is also delayed. This damages efficiency since the partner may either mistakenly move forward in the wrong way or not be able to move on at all until they receive the message. # Simultaneity: Group members are receiving and producing information at the same time. In copresent groups, members can help the group come to grounding criterion by reacting when other members are speaking. For example, a member would make a statement and another would smile and nod while he spoke, thereby showing that an understanding has been made. # Sequentiality: Group members are receiving information in a consecutive sequence; one piece of a task at a time. In distributed groups messages are often few and far between. A member could receive a message via email and then might review several other messages before returning to the original task. # Reviewability: Group members can review information they previously received from other members. In face to face conversation group members might forget the details of what a teammate said, but when using technology like instant-messaging they can save and review what was said in a conversation at a later date. # Revisability: Group members can review their own messages before imparting information to their fellow group members. Using technology like email or instant messaging, group members can revise information to make it more clear before sending it to their fellow group members.Related concepts
Situation awareness
Situation awareness theory holds that visual information helps pairs assess the current state of the task and plan future actions.Darren Gergle, Robert E. Kraut, Susan R. Fussell, Using Visual Information for Grounding and Awareness in Collaborative Tasks. http://kraut.hciresearch.org/sites/kraut.hciresearch.org/files/protected/GergleEtAl_UsingVisInfoForGroundingAndAwareness_HCIJ_Revision.pdf. An example would be when a friend is solving a problem that you know the solution to, you could intervene and provide hints or instructions when you see that your friend is stuck and needs help. Similarly, the grounding theory maintains that visual information can support the conversations through evidence of common ground or mutual understanding. Using the same example, you could provide clearer instruction to the problem when you see that your friend is stuck. Therefore, an extension to both theories would mean that when groups have timely visual information, they would be able to monitor the situation and clarify instructions more efficiently.Common ground (communication technique)
Common ground is a communication technique based on mutual knowledge as well as awareness of mutual knowledge. According to Barr, common ground and common knowledge are kinds of mutual knowledge.Barr, D. 2004. Establishing conventional communication systems: Is common knowledge necessary. Cognitive Science 28:937-962. Common ground is negotiated to close the gap between differences in perspective and this in turn would enable different perspectives and knowledge to be shared.Beers, Pieter J., Henny P. A. Boshuizen, Paul A. Kirschner, and Wim H. Gijselaers. "Common Ground, Complex Problems and Decision Making." Group Decision and Negotiation 15.6 (2006): 529-56. Web. 9 Nov. 2014. PsycholinguistHistorical examples
Common ground in communication has been critical in mitigating misunderstandings and negotiations. For example, common ground can be seen during the first moon landing betweenConsequences of a lack of common ground
Actor-observer effect
The difficulties of establishing common ground, especially in using telecommunications technology, can give rise to dispositional rather than situational attribution. This tendency is known as the " actor-observer effect". What this means is that people often attribute their own behavior to situational causes, while observers attribute the actor's behavior to the personality or disposition of the actor. For example, an actor's common reason to be late is due to the situational reason, traffic. Observers' lack of contextual knowledge about the traffic, i.e. common ground, leads to them attributing the lateness due to ignorance or laziness on the actor's part. This tendency towards dispositional attribution is especially magnified when the stakes are higher and the situation is more complex. When observers are relatively calm, the tendency towards dispositional attribution is less strong.Disappointment
Another consequence of a lack of mutual understanding is disappointment. When communicating partners fail to highlight the important points of their message to their partner or know the important points of the partner's message, then both parties can never satisfy their partner's expectations. This lack of common ground damages interpersonal trust, especially when partners do not have the contextual information of why the other party behaves the way they did.Multiple ignorances
People base their decisions and contribution based on their own point of view. When there is a lack of common ground in the points of views of individuals within a team, misunderstandings occur. Sometimes these misunderstandings remain undetected, which means that decisions would be made based on ignorant or misinformed point of views, which in turn lead to multiple ignorances. The team may not be able to find the right solution because it does not have a correct representation of the problem.Criticisms
Critiques of the approaches used to explore common ground suggest that the creation of a common set of mutual knowledge is an unobservable event which is hardly accessible to empirical research. It would require an omniscient point of view in order to look into the participants' heads.Koschmann, T. & LeBaron, C. D. (2003). Reconsidering Common Ground: Examining Clark's Contribution Theory in the OR. In: Proceedings of the 8th conference on European Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work, S. 81-98. http://www.ecscw.uni-siegen.de/2003/005Koschmann_ecscw03.pdf . By modeling the common ground from one communication partner's perspective is a model used to overcome this ambiguity.Fabian Bross (2012)See also
*Notes
References
* {{Citation , last1=Clark , first1=Herbert H. , last2=Brennan , first2=Susan E. , chapter=Grounding in communication , year=1991 , editor-last=Resnick , editor-first=L. B. , editor2-last=Levine , editor2-first=J. M. , editor3-last=Teasley , editor3-first=J. S. D. , title=Perspectives on socially shared cognition , publisher=American Psychological Association , isbn=1-55798-376-3 , chapter-url=http://www.psychology.sunysb.edu/sbrennan-/papers/clarkbrennan.pdf * Stalnaker, R. (2002): Common Ground. In: ''Linguistics and Philosophy'', 25, S. 701–721. Human communication Semantics Pragmatics