In On Conversation and Perception, psychologists study the way we perceive other people. It's possible to determine whether the way we perceive others will impact the way we judge ourselves. Researchers have conducted experiments involving dyads of same-sex people, mixed-sex people, and non-speaking observers. One study found that men and women were equally inaccurate in estimating the amount of information that other people possessed. However, the findings were not as clear-cut. In a study of group discusants, researchers found that the sex of the listener significantly affected perception.
The results of the experiment suggested that the social role hypothesis predicts overestimation of female parts. However, the findings did not hold for single-sex conversations. These results suggest that textual bias may play a role in the overestimation of female contributions in mixed-sex conversations. Further, the findings show that the gender of a speaker influences the perception of her contribution. While the results of the experiment suggest that textual bias may play a role, further studies are needed to determine whether gender affects the perception of a speaker.
In contrast, adult speakers can detect when a speaker is about to take a turn and anticipate it well. But children, who are still developing language understanding, rely more on prosodic information than do adults. A study by Professor Elsevier, and colleagues, found that children's perception of conversational turns resembled that of adults. This finding is the first evidence that adults rely more on prosodic information than does a 3-year-old.
The study also found that male listeners were more likely to view a female interrupter as less intelligent and friendly. Interestingly, the effects of gender bias on the perception of women and men in similar situations were not as pronounced. Although the study was conducted with natural conversations, this study pulls the concept of interruption into a new level. Listeners' own conversational styles were also important in the study. Hence, this study has a broad impact on our perception of other people.
On Conversation and Perception aims to promote philosophical research in the field. Although it is not a definitive study, it may serve as a basis for further investigation. The authors believe that women's speech is often undervalued in society. Some believe that women's speech is undervalued because it goes on too long. But others believe that the undervaluation of women's contributions to conversation reflects a woman's social role.
This study focuses on the role of Interaction Partners in conversational quality. The transmission delay is not considered a technical impairment, but rather a situational aspect that users attribute to the people involved. Participants rate Interaction Partners differently when transmission delays are present. This study highlights the importance of considering the situational aspects of conversational partners. So, what are we to attribute to our Interaction Partners? These are important questions to ask.