Date of Award:

5-2026

Document Type:

Dissertation

Degree Name:

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Department:

Psychology

Committee Chair(s)

Stephanie A. Borrie

Committee

Stephanie A. Borrie

Committee

Annalise R. Fletcher

Committee

Camille J. Wynn

Committee

Katerina A. Tetzloff

Committee

Tyson S. Barrett

Abstract

Successful conversation matters for social connection, wellbeing, and quality of life, but people do not always agree on whether a conversation was successful, even when they participated in the same interaction. Conversation is also commonly measured through task success, even though it’s unclear how task success correlates to how successful a conversation feels. This study examined how conversational success is experienced by different conversation partners and whether feeling successful in a conversation is related to how well a task is completed.

Participants took part in a structured conversational task and then rated their own conversational experience using a self-report questionnaire called the Person-Reported Outcome of Conversational Success (PROCS). Results showed that partners often differed in how successful they felt a conversation was. These differences were especially notable in conversations involving autistic participants, including conversations between two autistic individuals. In contrast, factors such as gender pairing and how well partners knew each other did not strongly influence agreement. Importantly, doing well on the conversation task did not reliably mean that participants felt that the conversation was successful, particularly among adults.

These findings show that conversational success is not a single, objective outcome but a personal and relational experience that can vary between partners. Measuring conversational success from only one perspective or relying solely on task performance may miss important aspects of how conversations are actually experienced. Incorporating subjective person-reported measures alongside objective assessments provides a more complete and meaningful understanding of communication.

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