Verbal report protocols have been considered as direct representations of individual cognitive processes. The present study examined the social nature of verbal reports, particularly focusing on whether and in what ways concurrent think-aloud (TA) protocol data are recipient-designed. The results of this study suggest that verbal reports elicited by TA do contain interactive and social features, and that the participants orient to a listener while carrying out the protocol. Treating verbal report protocols as solely cognitive products under represents what they actually reveal. Protocols are socially and interactively constituted, and this fact has to be taken into consideration when analyzing TA data. The strong orientations to the listener observed in this study suggest that a different recipient might evoke different content or types of protocol, just as other social factors could influence the data.