Collaborative Model - Other Supporting Studies

Other Supporting Studies

Subsequent studies affirmed many of Clark and Wilkes-Gibbs' theories. These included a study by Clark and Michael Schober in 1989 that dealt with overhearers and contrasting how well they understand compared to direct addressees. In the literary model, overhearers would be expected to understand as well as addressees, while in the collaborative model, overhearers would be expected to do worse, since they are not part of the collaborative process and the speaker is not concerned with making sure anyone but the addressee understands.

The study conducted by the pair mimicked the Clark/Wilkes-Gibbs study, but included a silent overhearer as part of the process. The speaker and addressee were allowed to converse, while the overhearer attempted to arrange his figures according to what the speaker was saying. In different versions of this study, overhearers had access to a tape recording of the speaker's directions, while in another they simply all sat in the same room.

The study found that overhearers had significantly more difficulty than addressees in both experiments, therefore, according to the researchers, lending credence to the collaborative model.