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From: Steve Hood
Date: 10/21/03
Time: 10:00:28 PM
Remote Name: 152.163.252.166
Hi Julie
You asked a good question. I wish that this were not the last night of the interactive component so that others could chime in with their ideas. Time does not permit a complete reply, but I can give you some ideas.
When we think of competition in general, or sibling rivalry in particular, we think of "physical things" like pushing and shoving and even fighting. There is another form of competition and maybe this is that you are referring to-- verbal competition: interupting, contradicting, etc. And of course, this is a two way street, and usually there are several simultaneous culprits-- among friends, siblings, parents, children, etc.
When we see a lot of this we try to work with "verbal turn taking" to reduce this aspect of communicative stress. Like green and red traffid lights that tell cars to stop or go, we need a signal system to work on the stop-go- between speaker and listener. This sounds pretty mechanical-- but it is the idea of allowing a pause of about a full second between the time each person is the speaker and the listener, so that not more than one person is talking at the same time..... (Sometimes you need a referree to keep score, and sometimes there are arguments about which person gets "jipped' and not allowed to talk as much as the others. But in time, all parties become more aware of this, and can then try to act accordingly.
Gosh-- you asked a great quesrtion on the last night of ISAS... I hope others have time to weigh in on this one.
Steve Hood