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Communication and Common Ground

It is well known that human agents communicate more easily with others of similar occupation and educational background, since they have similar experiences, beliefs, and knowledge [1]. Furthermore, the more individuals communicate, the more similar they become [2].

Whilst examining issues concerning direct communication between two human agents, this is quite obvious and the relevance of the communication process also in health care setups has been widely demonstrated [3]. For instance, clinical experts often meet and discuss actual and past clinical cases. The cognitive notion of common ground is the key point in this context. It refers to the knowledge shared by two communicating agents [4] (e.g. the discussion of a medical problem with a medical colleague is really different from that with a patient).

According to Coiera [5], the notion of common ground holds whether we refer to conversational interaction between human beings or human-computer interaction. Cost for reaching the desired level of communication depends on the balance between the classes of grounding:

Thus, any given interaction between two agents involves costs born at the time of conversation, as well as costs born previously in pre-emptive groundings. When there is a mixture of human and computer agents, an information system designer has a spectrum of options (based on the above mentioned balancing) for designing the interaction among them.


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References

[1] Lazarsfeld PF, Merton RK.
Friendship as social process: a substantive and methodological analysis.
in Berger M, et al. (eds.). Freedom and Control in Modern Society. New York: Octagon, 1964.

[2] Rogers EM.
Diffusion of Innovations.
4th ed. New York: Free Press, 1995.

[3] Tang P, Jaworski MA, Fellencer CA, Kreider N, LaRosa MP, Marquardt WC.
Clinical information activities in diverse ambulatory care practices.
Proc AMIA Annu Fall Symp.1996:12–6.

[4]Clarke H, Brennan S.
Grounding in communication.
Resnick LB. Levine J, Behreno SD (eds). Perspectives on Socially Shared Cognition. Washington, DC: American Psychological Association, 1991 Tang P, Jaworski MA, Fellencer CA, Kreider N, LaRosa MP, Marquardt WC.

[5] Coiera E.
When conversation is better than computation.
JAMIA Volume 7, Number 3, May/June 2000