Technology and Effective
Communication
“Micro” Social Theory
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Much work occurs in groups or teams of 2+ people
– E.g., lab groups, project teams, classes
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Teamwork varies along a number of dimensions, e.g.:
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Synchronous/asynchronous
Timing (fast/slow)
Nature of artifacts being manipulated (documents, objects, etc.)
Interdependence of roles
Assumption: designing technology to support remote group
interaction requires knowing how face-to-face teams coordinate their
language and actions to achieve their goals
Coordination Mechanisms
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In face-to-face settings, team members use a
variety of coordination mechanisms:
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Conversation
Nonverbal cues (e.g., facial expressions, gaze)
Gestures/pointing
Observation of partners’ actions and task status
Technologies for remote collaboration are unlikely to be able to
implement all of these coordination mechanisms
Need: a theory of group interaction that will allow us to predict
what features of face-to-face interaction should be
implemented in tools for remote collaboration and how those
features should be implemented
– Predictions must be specific to the types of tasks work teams are
performing
Clark’s Theory of Common Ground
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•
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Interpersonal communication is more efficient when
people share more common ground
Common ground = mutual knowledge, beliefs,
goals, attitudes that people know that they share
Grounding = The interactive process in a
conversation by which communicators exchange
evidence about what they do or do not understand.
– Presentation phase: Speaker presents utterance to addressee
– Acceptance phase: Addressee accepts utterance by providing evidence of
understanding
•
•
People ground utterances to the extent necessary
“for current purposes”
Principle of least collaborative effort – the pair
should do the minimum necessary for successful
grounding
Example of grounding
Grounding in a Bicycle Repair Task
h,
w,
w,
h,
w,
h,
h,
w,
Pick up the seat please.
Okay.
Got the seat.
And have it upside down like you
couldn't sit on it- trust me.
I can't sit on it.
Okay.
Now- uh- closer to your right hand
there are these things called rails.
Got em.
Unpacking Mutual Knowledge/Common Ground
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•
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Communication rests on mutual knowledge or common
ground:
– The knowledge the parties to a communication hold in
common and know they have in common
Speakers are hypothesis testers.
– “If I say ‘X’, will listener understand ‘X’?”
– “If I say ‘Did you see the game?’ will listener
understand ‘Did you see the Pirates/Cub’s wildcard
play-off game last night?’”
Speaker does hypothesis testing at two points:
– Presentation phase — “What should I say?”
– Acceptance phase — “Did the listener understand what
I meant or should I elaborate?”
Name these objects
A
100%: Circle
B
70%: Star
30%: Adjective Star
Name these objects
A
80%: Circle
20%: White Circle
•
B
0%: Star
100%: Adjective Star
C
60%: Star
40%: Adjective Star
Speakers take into account what they expect their
partners to know
– Name objects to distinguish among similar objects which
a listener (a) has in mind and (b) is likely to confuse
But speakers can fail to anticipate what
their partner will understand
•
Subjects compose sentencelong statement about two
topic
– Sarcastic vs sincere
– E-mail vs voice
•
Replication
– E-mail vs voice vs in-person
– Convey phrase with an
emotion (sarcasm,
seriousness, anger,
sadness)
– Partner was stranger vs
friend
Friendship made no difference
Kruger, J., Epley, N., Parker, J., & Ng, Z.-W. (2005). Egocentrism over email: Can we communicate as well as we think? Journal of Personality and
Social Psychology, 89(6), 925-936.
Referential communication task
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Referring to things is basic to communication
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Stylized game to understand reference: One person (the
director) tells another (the worker) in what order to place
these Tangram figures
Demo of a Referential Communication
Task
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Form 3 person teams: director, worker, observer
Director tells workers how to arrange figures
Workers arranges the figures
Observer observes & records:
– How fast & accurately the director/worker team
performed.
– How the pair coordinated naming conventions.
– How director knew if the worker understood a direction.
– What they did to get better over time.
Observer record sheet
Trial
Correct?
Time to
complete
(Min:Sec)
1
Y N
____:____
2
Y N
____:____
3
Y N
____:____
4
Y N
____:____
Notes: How did director know that the worker
understood a direction?
Partners are learning
• Communicators
come to agree on a pair-specific
description of objects
• With
a new partner, words per object returns to close to original level
What evidence do people use for grounding?
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Personal knowledge
Group membership
Linguistic co-presence
Explicit feedback
Physical co-presence
Personal Knowledge
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Encoders describe colors or
figures for self or for other.
Study 1: Other is “another
student”
Decoders get own
descriptions (self)
descriptions for another
(social), or someone else’s
self-description (non-social)
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Study 2: Other is friend in
experiment or “another
student”
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DV=% Accurate
Stimuli for Expert vs. Novice Study
1
2
3
4
5
6
Partners can partially accommodate to
differences in others knowledge
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Task: Order postcards of NYC
landmarks
•Experts: New Yorkers
•Novices: Mid-westerns & others
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Experts talking to experts are more
efficient than novices talking to
novices
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Work with resources at hand
•Mixed pairs learn from each other
•Novices learn to use names
•Experts learn to use descriptions
•But adjustments are incomplete
Role of technology
Applying Grounding Theory
To Technology
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Clark & Brennan (1991): “People should ground with those
techniques available in a medium that lead to the least collaborative
effort.”
Hypothesis: Objective characteristics of different communication
media change the costs of conversational grounding and strategies
people use.
Some key types of costs:
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Production/Reception costs: costs of producing/receiving messages
Start-up costs: costs of initiating conversation
Asynchrony costs: costs of timing utterances
Speaker change costs: costs of turn-taking
Repair costs: costs of correcting misunderstandings
Should allow us to predict in advance what features new
technologies should have to meet different collaborative purposes
Affordances of Communication Media
(Clark & Brennan, 1991)
Co-Presence
Participants share physical environment, including a view
of what each other is doing and looking at
Visibility
Participants can see one another but not what each is
doing or looking at
Audibility
Participants can hear one another
Cotemporality
Messages are received close to the time that they are
produced, permitting fine-grained interactivity
Simultaneity
Multiple participants can send/receive messages at the
same time, allowing backchannel communication
Sequentiality
Participants take turns in an orderly fashion in a single
conversation
Reviewability
Messages do not fade over time
Revisability
Messages can be revised before being sent
Technology changes strategies and
costs of grounding
Exactly how conversationalist achieve common ground
depends up the details of the technology available
Features of
communication
setting
Change
Needs for
& costs of
• formulation
• co-presence
• production
• visibility
• reception
• audibility
• understanding
• co-temporality (no lag)
• start-up
• simultaneity (full duplex)
• delay
• sequentiality
• asynchrony
• reviewability
• speaker change
• revisability
• display
• fault
• repair
Affordances of Conventional Media
Affordance
Face-toFace
Video
Conf.
Phone
Email
Copresence
++
?
--
--
Visibility
++
+
--
--
Audibility
++
++
++
--
Cotemporality
++
+
++
--
Simultaneity
++
+
++
--
Sequentiality
++
++
++
--
Reviewability
--
--
--
++
Revisability
--
--
--
++
Direction giving exercise
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Volunteer to describe a simple figure to the class, with and without
feedback
A
B
Interactivity improves communication
encoding
Message
Sender
decoding
Receiver
Response/
decoding
Backchannel
encoding
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Feedback and interactivity is one effective way of achieving
common ground
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Feedback tailors communication to an audience, making it more
effective
Effects of technology on partnerspecific learning
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Need feedback to learn
from each other
Some technology can
disrupt the feedback
• Half-duplex (speakerphone)
vs full-duplex audio
(telephone)
• Even 100-250 msecs
reduces coordination
• Video that desynchronizes
audio & video channels
disrupts lip-reading
Feedback & active listening are skilled
behavior: You can learn to do it better
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Five behaviors for active listening
Types
Acknowledge
Purpose
1. To convey that you are interested.
2. To encourage partner to talk
Clarify
1. To get additional facts.
2. To help explore all sides of a
problem.
1.To check your meaning and
interpretation with partner.
2. To show you are listening and you
understand
3. To encourage partner to analyze other
aspects of the matter discussed
I. To show that you understand how
your partner feels about what they are
saying
2. To help partner to evaluate and
temper his/her own feelings as
expressed
3. To say you care enough to listen to
more than just the surface-level content
Restate
Reflect
Examples
I. I see
2. ‘Uh-huh
3. Tell me more about that
1. Can you clarify this?
2. Do you mean this?
3. Is this the problem as you see it now?
1. As I understand it, then, your plan is…
2. This is what you have decided to do and
the reasons are.
1. You feel angry
2. You’re disappointed with yourself
because …
3. It must have been a shocking experience
for you
4. You sound hopeful about …
Yee et al Meta-Analysis
Comparison of 25
experiments
– People interact via text or
voice
– Presence of avatar
• None
• Unrealistic (cartoon)
• Photorealistic
– Outcomes
• Performance
• Subjective evaluations
of experience or
partner
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Performance &
subjective evaluations
improved with avatar
Realism only influence
subjective evaluations
0.16
Correlation (r) btw avatart type and
outcome
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0.14
0.14
Performance
0.13
Subjective
0.11
0.12
0.1
0.08
0.06
0.04
0.02
0
-0.02
No avatar vs
avatar
Cartoon vs
photorealistic avatar
-0.04
-0.06
-0.04
Avatar type
Apple Facetime
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iu1jHtf_oUc