Language-Invariant Strategies of Navigating Transitions in Joint Activities: Forms and Functions of Coordination Markers.

ABSTRACT: Goal-directed tasks unfold in hierarchies of larger and smaller sub-tasks, and pursuing them jointly implies that participants must agree on whether they are continuing an ongoing sub-task (horizontal transition) or switching to the next sub-task (vertical transition). Previous research indicates that humans employ short and efficient coordination markers as procedural conventions to distinguish horizontal (e.g., in English, with yeah and uh-huh) and vertical transitions (with okay, all right). However, it remains unclear (1) whether such words serve as potentially universal coordination devices and (2) which properties make some markers more suitable for horizontal versus vertical transition contexts. We hypothesized that horizontal transitions in ongoing sub-tasks are associated with hig

SUBMITTER: Morozova N 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC12658410 | biostudies-literature | 2025 Nov

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature