As people transmit information through a communication chain, they drop details, add interpretations, and alter implications. To answer the question, are these losses and alterations reversible, subjects completed a serial reproduction task and then sent the simplified result through the system a second time to see if the lost features would be regained. Subjects restored the edited material, and their reconstruction closely approximated the original input. Implications for uncertainty absorption, organizational learning, adaptability, and information processing are discussed.
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