Behavioral and Brain Sciences



Short Communication

Two steps forward, one step back: Partner-specific effects in a psychology of dialogue


Susan E. Brennan a1 and Charles A. Metzing a1
a1 Department of Psychology, State University of New York, Stony Brook, NY 11794-2500 susan.brennan@sunysb.edu cmetzing@ic.sunysb.edu http://www.psychology.sunysb.edu/psychology/personnel/Susan.htm

Abstract

Pickering & Garrod's (P&G's) call to study language processing in dialogue context is an appealing one. Their interactive alignment model is ambitious, aiming to explain the converging behavior of dialogue partners via both intra- and interpersonal priming. However, they ignore the flexible, partner-specific processing demonstrated by some recent dialogue studies. We discuss implications of these data.