A study of the relationship between communicative performance and conversation participants’ thoughts

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Abstract
This study directly examines the assumed relationship between a communicator's thoughts and his/her communicative actions. Individuals’ communicative performance (i.e., effectiveness and appropriateness) on an information acquisition task was assessed and assigned to high, moderate and low communication competence groupings. Their thought protocols, as gathered through a stimulated recall procedure, were then compared. As predicted, high competent communicators had more goal‐relevant thoughts than their less competent counterparts. Moreover, communicators’ thoughts corresponded with the type of performance strategies evidenced in their interactions. Other results indicated that low competent communicators had significantly more self assessment thoughts than their more competent counterparts. However, no support was found for a predicted interaction between competence level and goal complexity. The results were discussed in terms of implications for further study of cognitive processing and communicative performance.