Perspective-Taking in Communication: Representations of Others' Knowledge in Reference

TLDR

The authors review studies on perspective‑taking in communication, including investigations of how accurately people assess others’ knowledge. The studies show that speakers use shared common ground to craft clearer references, improving comprehension, while listeners’ judgments of others’ knowledge are generally accurate yet biased toward their own knowledge, and the impact of these judgments on message formulation depends on feedback, indicating that perspective‑taking integrates prior knowledge theories with conversational cues.

Abstract

We review several studies examining perspective-taking in communication. One set of studies indicates that speakers exploit the common ground they share with their addressees in creating referring expressions and that such perspective-taking improves the listener's comprehension. A second set of studies examines an element of the perspective-taking process itself: the accuracy of people's assessments of others' knowledge. We find that such estimates are both fairly accurate and biased in the direction of the perceiver's own knowledge. However, the extent of their influence on message formulation depends on the availability of feedback. We conclude that perspective-taking in communication combines prior theories about what others know with information drawn from such conversational resources as verbal and nonverbal feedback.