Studies in Interactive Communication: II. The Effects of Four Communication Modes on the Linguistic Performance of Teams during Cooperative Problem Solving

Two-man teams solved credible, “real world” problems for which computer assistance has been or could be useful. Conversations were carried on in one of four modes of communication: (1) typewriting, (2) handwriting, (3) voice, and (4) natural, unrestricted communication. Both experienced and inexperienced typists were tested in the typewriting mode. Performance was assessed on three classes of dependent measures: time to solution, behavioral measures of activity, and linguistic measures. Significant differences among the communication modes were found in each of the three classes of dependent variable. This paper is concerned mainly with the results of the linguistic analyses. Linguistic performance was assessed with 182 measures, most of which turned out to be redundant and some of which were useless or meaningless. Those that remain show that although problems can be solved faster in the oral modes than in the hard-copy modes, the oral modes are characterized by many more messages, sentences, words, and unique words; much higher communication rates; but lower type-token ratios. Although a number of significant problem and job role effects were found, there were relatively few significant interactions of modes with these variables. It appears, therefore, that the mode effects hold for both problems and for both job roles assigned to the subjects.