Interaction structure constrains the emergence of conventions in group communication

Abstract

Real-world communication frequently requires language producers to address more than one comprehender at once, yet most psycholinguistic research focuses on one-on-one communication. As the audience size grows, interlocutors face new challenges that do not arise in dyads. They must consider multiple perspectives and weigh multiple sources of feedback to build shared understanding. Here, we ask which properties of the group’s interaction structure facilitate successful communication. We used a repeated reference game paradigm in which directors instructed between one and five matchers to choose specific targets out of a set of abstract figures. Across 313 games ( N = 1,319 participants), we manipulated several key constraints on the group’s interaction, including the amount of feedback that matchers could give to directors and the availability of peer interaction between matchers. Across groups of different sizes and interaction constraints, describers produced increasingly efficient utterances and matchers made increasingly accurate selections. Critically, however, we found that smaller groups and groups with less-constrained interaction structures (“thick channels”) showed stronger convergence to group-specific conventions than large groups with constrained interaction structures (“thin channels”), which struggled with convention formation. Overall, these results shed light on the core structural factors that enable communication to thrive in larger groups.