What underlies repair avoidance in conversation? The role of interpersonal needs and motivation in human communication

Abstract

This study (Galantucci et al. 2020, henceforth Repair Avoidance Study) did discover a significant factor in predicting repair, namely, repair importance. That is, participants in the HPC condition repaired significantly more frequently than those in the LPC condition. This is because in the HPC condition, repair was more important and essential to knowing which item to move, whereas in the LPC condition it could be deduced that the sole ambiguous item was the “skask”. It then follows that in the LPC condition participants failed to repair simply because there was no need to in order to decipher what was being communicated. Perhaps repair is only expected when deductive reasoning fails. Despite this being a legitimate interpretation of the effect of repair importance on repair, this cannot be a comprehensive explanation of repair avoidance. After all, even in the HPC condition (where repair was critical), many participants failed to repair. There must be something else behind repair avoidance. (from Introduction)