Internet experts' planning of explanations for laypersons: a Web experimental approach in the Internet domain

How flexible are Internet experts in taking the perspective of laypersons? A Web experimental approach is presented that examines the Internet experts' perspective taking in planning explanations for laypersons. The Internet was the topic to be communicated and it also provided the means to implement the experimental method. Participants rated how extensively they would treat some specific concepts when explaining a topic such as the WWW. Independent variables were the addressee's intention, their level of domain knowledge, and the importance of the concepts to be evaluated. The results show that the experts preferred planning strategies that integrated all three types of information. Though their planning decisions were mainly guided by conceptual constraints, the Internet experts also took into account information about the addressee's intention and prior knowledge.