Language & Interaction Lab

Research in this lab examines shared understanding—or misunderstanding—and coordinated action in a range of arenas, from casual conversations to standardized survey interviews to musical performances and improvisations. Analyses examine understanding and communication in the primary participants in an interaction as well as their audiences--listeners, eavesdroppers, and physically co-present or remote audiences to live or recorded performances.Another focus is on how the mode of communication (e.g., remote video, asynchronous texting, social media broadcasting, face to face interviewing) affects interaction and understanding, in our era of rapid proliferation of new modes and choices. Measures include people’s willingness to disclose sensitive information and provide precise answers in survey interviews, their sense of copresence with their interaction partners, which modes of communication they prefer, and the alignment of their music- making.

A common theme across projects in the lab is testing theoretical questions in as-close-to-real- world settings as feasible, under the premise that robust psychological theories should apply both in and beyond the lab, and among participants recruited from specific theory-relevant populations (e.g., frequent jazz performance attendees, people willing to participate in live video interviews, online survey panelists). Lab projects have also made use of and tested the communicative power of new data visualization tools, for example in building new tools for visualizing time-based qualitative data about collective experience and cognition in music performances, in testing and comparing alternate representations of information about uncertainty (e.g., hurricane forecast maps), and in testing the extent to which visual features in online surveys—like default and alternate font—might change survey responses and feeling about participating.