Factors affecting the success of referential communication

Abstract

A study was designed to determine the factors that cause difficulty to adolescent listeners performing referential communication. Difficulties might arise because of (a) inability to detect message inadequacy, (b) misperception of task demands, or (c) inability to formulate an adequate question. The results of the present study showed that both able and less able subjects were able to detect message inadequacy almost perfectly, but that less able subjects had severe difficulty in formulating adequate requests for more information. Analysis suggests that in our 13-to 14-year-old subjects information-processing limitations, rather than lack of purely linguistic skills, account for most of the error variance when the task demands are transparent. © 1987 Plenum Publishing Corporation.