Interaction Organization in Graphical Communication

In this paper, we examine interaction organizations in communication through drawing. We report that both sequential and parallel interaction organizations take place in actual human graphical communication, despite the fact that the media use involved in drawing has resource characteristics that better match parallel organizations. We argue that activity-dependent constraints imposed by the task performed in the interaction play a significant role in determining the interaction organization. We propose two types of sequentiality constraints and demonstrate that they can override the resource characteristics of the drawing media, thereby enforcing a sequential turntaking organization similar to those observed in verbal interactions.