Action Assembly Theory

Action assembly theory (AAT) is an approach to explicating the processes by which people produce verbal and nonverbal messages. The domain encompassed by verbal and nonverbal message production is obviously quite broad, and thus AAT addresses issues such as the nature of consciousness, the processes that give rise to creativity in what people think and do, the link between thoughts and overt actions, the relationship between verbal and nonverbal components of behavior, and how people plan and edit what they say. AAT has been applied in investigating a range of phenomena, including the nature of the self-concept, the behavioral cues that accompany deception, communication skill and skill acquisition, communication apprehension, and conditions that affect speech fluency. The theory is most closely associated with John Greene, his colleagues, and his students.

Every theory is developed within a matrix of assumptions, methods, research findings, and even other theories. It is useful, then, to examine key elements of the intellectual matrix in which a theory is embedded. In the case of AAT, four hierarchically ordered, foundational influences are particularly noteworthy. At the most basic level, AAT reflects the commitments of science as a way of knowing (i.e., an emphasis on empiricism, inter-subjectivity, and rigor). Moving up one level, the particular branch of science reflected in the theory is that of cognitivism—explanation of behavior by recourse to descriptions of the mental states and processes that give rise to that behavior. Cognitive science itself encompasses a number of distinct philosophical and methodological approaches. The cognitive approach exemplified in AAT is primarily that of functionalism (i.e., inferring the nature of the mind from observed input-output regularities). At the fourth level of the hierarchy, the theory reflects the commitments of generative realism: the idea that people are simultaneously social, psychological, and physical beings and that theories of human behavior need to incorporate all three of these elements.

Just as one's grasp of a theory is enhanced by understanding the assumptions and scholarly traditions that it reflects, it is similarly useful to be able to locate a theory along a timeline of pertinent intellectual developments. Relevant to AAT, cognitive science emerged as the dominant approach in experimental psychology in the mid-1950s, partly as a result of growing recognition of the inadequacies of behaviorism. The assumptions and techniques of cognitivism were quickly assimilated by scholars studying linguistics and speech production, [Page 8]but cognitive science was rather slow to gain a foothold in the field of communication proper. Not until the mid-1970s did scholars in the field begin to adopt a cognitive perspective in exploring communication processes. By the early 1980s, cognitivism had become an important force in the field, but, with a few notable exceptions, this work was focused almost exclusively on input processing (e.g., message comprehension) rather than output processes (e.g., message production). In this context, in 1984, the first article on AAT appeared—a publication that subsequently received the National Communication Association's Woolbert Award for seminal contributions to communication research. In 1997, “A Second Generation Action Assembly Theory” (AAT2) was published, and research and conceptual refinements in the AAT framework continue to the present.

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