Allocation of speech in conversation
In adult small talk, people talk more to the quiet partner — the matching law flips to antimatching.
01Research in Context
What this study did
Simon et al. (2017) watched adults talk in pairs. One person was a helper who followed a script. The script made the helper talk a lot or a little and nod more or less.
The team tracked how much each real participant spoke and where they looked. They wanted to know if people match the helper’s talk rate and approval, like the matching law says.
What they found
People did the opposite of matching. When the helper talked a lot, the participant talked less. When the helper stayed quiet, the participant filled the gap.
Eye gaze showed the same flip. No one chased the approval nods either. The matching law did not work here.
How this fits with other research
Kronfli et al. (2021) found a perfect match in parent training. After BST, parents handed out praise in exact step with kids’ good behavior and problem behavior dropped. The clash is simple: parents followed the matching law, but adults in conversation broke it. The difference is the crowd and the place — parents and kids at home versus strangers in a lab.
Glenn (1988) got rats to match under special VR schedules, but only when both counters ticked. Simon’s humans acted like the counters were broken; they ran the other way. The lab still rules for animals, yet human talk has extra social rules that flip the equation.
Atnip (1977) warned that matching math fails for simple ratio schedules. Simon’s chat task looks like a loose ratio — speak now or lose your turn — so the old warning fits the new bust.
Why it matters
When you teach conversation skills, do not assume clients will naturally balance talk time. You may need to script turn-taking or use timers. If you track social reinforcement, look for antimatching — some kids may grab the mic when adults go quiet. Finally, the matching law is a tool, not a promise; test it in each new setting before you bank on it.
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02At a glance
03Original abstract
In a replication and extension of Conger and Killeen's (1974) widely cited demonstration of matching in conversations, we evaluated nine participants' allocation of speech and gaze to two conversational partners. German speakers participated in two 90-min sessions in which confederates uttered approval on independent variable-interval schedules. In one of the sessions, confederates uttered approval contingent upon and contiguous with eye contact whereas in the other session approval was uttered independent of the participant's gaze. Several measures of participants' verbal behavior were taken, including relative duration and rate of speech and gaze. These were compared to confederates' relative rate of approval and relative duration and rate of talk. The generalized matching equation was fitted to the various relations between participants' behavior and confederates' behavior. Conger and Killeen's results were not replicated; participants' response allocation did not show a systematic relation to the confederates' relative rate of approval. The strongest relations were to overall talk, rather than approval. In both conditions, the participant talked more to the confederate who talked less-inverse or antimatching. Participants' gaze showed the same inverse relation to the confederates' talk. Requiring gaze to be directed toward a confederate for delivery of approval made no difference in the results. The absence of a difference combined with prior research suggests that matching or antimatching in conversations is more likely due to induction than to reinforcement.
Journal of the Experimental Analysis of Behavior, 2017 · doi:10.1002/jeab.249