Date of Award

5-2021

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Arts (MA)

College/School

College of Humanities and Social Sciences

Department/Program

Psychology

Thesis Sponsor/Dissertation Chair/Project Chair

Jennifer Pardo

Committee Member

Alan Pehrson

Committee Member

John Paul Wilson

Abstract

The current study explored the usage of various categories of words within the Montclair Map Task Corpus (MMTC) to determine if any relationships between the use of a certain category of words and task performance existed. The MMTC utilized a collaborative map task to explore the relationship between various patterns of communication styles and task performance. The current study built upon those goals by engaging in an in-depth analysis of the category of words utilized within the corpus. Based on the prior research on gender differences, it was hypothesized that category word usage would vary across different pair sex (male, female, mixed), and the relationship between their usage and partner performance would also vary. Based on the demand characteristics of the map task, certain categories such as direction and figure were expected to predict partner performance. No significant variations within the category usage across different pair sex were found, although the category types did vary in their proportion of use, overall. Affirm, direction, and figure category usage significantly predicted a partner’s performance on the task. Overall, female pairs and mixed-sex pairs differed from male pairs such that the relationship between affirm, direction, and figure category usage was weaker in male pairs compared to female pairs and mixed-sex pairs.

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