ABSTRACT
AMONG the important determinants of the course that a given so- cial interaction will follow are the knowledge structures that con- versational participants bring with them to the interaction, the data that they gather during the interaction, and the ways in which incoming data interact with knowledge structures to produce social action. This view is compatible with recent calls for a more cognitive approach to the study of interpersonal communication (Berger & Roloff, 1980; Planalp & Hewes, 1981; Roloff & Berger, 1982). In general, these authors argue that the ways in which persons gather, encode, and retrieve social information during the course of interactions exert considerable impact upon the decisions that in- teractants make regarding the ways in which they will or will not communi- cate with each other.
