Judgments of communicative intent in conversation

By their words ye shall know them: Language abstraction and the likeability of describers

“…To communicate in an effective manner, both describers and recipients must together perceive the purpose, or underlying intentions behind messages (Albright et al, 2004). The present results extend previous research showing that language abstraction is a subtle but important window through which recipients may gaze in their efforts to determine communicators' intentions .…”

When what you say about others says something about you: Language abstraction and inferences about describers’ attitudes and goals

“…To communicate eVectively, it is clear that both communicators and recipients must consensually perceive the intentions underlying messages (Allbright et al, 2004). Thus, our Wnding that recipients are able to extract information about describers' attitudes and intentions points to how language abstraction may facilitate the information transmission function of communication.…”

“…Communication is therefore responsible for both the generation and transmission of information. Central to both functions is the ability of its participants to determine each others' characteristics and goals (Allbright, Cohen, Malloy, Christ, & Bromgard, 2004;Higgins, 1981).…”

Automatic intention recognition in conversation processing☆

“…However, recognition of the specific speech acts performed with these utterances was not examined. More recently, Albright, Cohen, Malloy, Christ, and Bromgard (2004) had participants engage in short unstructured conversations and then later asked them to judge the communicative intent of a random sample of utterances from these conversations. There was a relatively high degree of consensus in these judgments indicating that people do tend to agree on the action speakers are performing with their utterances.…”