Test whether signaling effects vary with conversation depth

Determine whether organizational cues such as bold text, headings, and code blocks exert a larger influence on votes in single-turn than in multi-turn Compar:IA comparisons when answer content is held fixed, and establish whether differences in cue effects are mediated by voter attention.

Background

The study observes that associations for bold text, headings, and code blocks are generally smaller in multi-turn conversations, whereas the association for MATTR is relatively stable. Because users choose whether to continue a conversation, the observational results cannot establish that conversation depth causes the difference.

The authors frame signaling as a hypothesis and propose a controlled experiment that randomly adds or removes organizational cues while holding answer content constant. They further suggest combining votes with measures such as dwell time or scrolling to assess whether cues guide attention.