Dynamics of Remote Communication: Movement Coordination in Video-Mediated and Face-to-Face Conversations

Citations Over TimeTop 10% of 2022 papers

Abstract

The present pandemic forced our daily interactions to move into the virtual world. People had to adapt to new communication media that afford different ways of interaction. Remote communication decreases the availability and salience of some cues but also may enable and highlight others. Importantly, basic movement dynamics, which are crucial for any interaction as they are responsible for the informational and affective coupling, are affected. It is therefore essential to discover exactly how these dynamics change. In this exploratory study of six interacting dyads we use traditional variability measures and cross recurrence quantification analysis to compare the movement coordination dynamics in quasi-natural dialogues in four situations: (1) remote video-mediated conversations with a self-view mirror image present, (2) remote video-mediated conversations without a self-view, (3) face-to-face conversations with a self-view, and (4) face-to-face conversations without a self-view. We discovered that in remote interactions movements pertaining to communicative gestures were exaggerated, while the stability of interpersonal coordination was greatly decreased. The presence of the self-view image made the gestures less exaggerated, but did not affect the coordination. The dynamical analyses are helpful in understanding the interaction processes and may be useful in explaining phenomena connected with video-mediated communication, such as "Zoom fatigue".

Related Papers

• → Do Iconic Hand Gestures Really Contribute to the Communication of Semantic Information in a Face-to-Face Context?(2009)110 cited
• → Face-to-Face and Computer-Mediated Communication: What Does Theory Tell Us and What Have We Learned so Far?(2010)109 cited
• → Early Goffman and the Analysis of Face-to-Face Interaction in Strategic Interaction(1980)11 cited
• → Students and supervisors interactions in master’s projects: Exploring face-to-face vs mediated communication(2023)2 cited