Communication is a socially highly relevant form of joint action. Adaptation of interlocutors to each other’s verbal behavior, e.g. by using identical lexical expressions or syntactic structures, is a well-studied phenomenon. Such adaptation can be found on various linguistic levels and may contribute to communicative success. But to what extent do situational aspects, cognitive capacities, social skills etc. influence adaptation on these different linguistic levels?

We present a series of experiments, using the confederate scripting technique with children and adults, investigating the potential influence of cognitive factors (e.g. working memory) and social factors (e.g. interlocutor’s native language) on the strength of linguistic adaptation.

Results showed that participants adapted to their interlocutor’s lexical terms, even if these were unconventional (e.g. saying telephone for a cell phone), and did so to a greater extent if their conversational partner was a non-native speaker. General language capabilities had no effect on adaptation at the syntactic level, while lower working memory capacity decreased adaptation strength.

The results suggest that social-strategic and cognitive factors influence the amount of adaptation that may contribute to successful communication. In addition, top-down factors may influence adaptation behavior more strongly than general language capabilities.