Realistic Motion Avatars are the Future for Social Interaction in Virtual Reality

This study evaluated participant self-reported appraisal of social interactions with another person in virtual reality (VR) where their conversational partner was represented by a realistic motion avatar. We use the term realistic motion avatar because: 1. The avatar was modelled to look like the conversational partner it represented, and 2. Full face and body motion capture was utilised so that the avatar mimicked the facial and body language of the conversational partner in real-time. We compared social interaction in VR with face-to-face interaction across two communicative contexts: 1. Getting acquainted conversation, and 2. A structured interview where the participant engaged in self-disclosure about positive and negative experiences. Overall, participants largely indicated they preferred face-to-face over VR communication. However, some participants did indicate a preference for VR communication. Additionally, an analysis of post-conversation ratings indicated no significant difference for rated enjoyment, understanding, self-disclosure, comfort, and awkwardness between communication modes. The only ratings where face-to-face was found to be superior was for perceived closeness across both types of communication, and for feeling understood specifically when disclosing negative experiences. Most participants perceived frequent eye contact in both face-to-face and VR interaction, but typically more eye contact when face-to-face. Eye contact was positively associated with rated enjoyment, closeness, and comfort. Overall, our findings suggest that harnessing full face and body motion capture can make social interaction in VR very similar to face-to-face interaction. We anticipate that VR social interaction is poised to become the next major technological evolution for human computer mediated communication and suggest avenues for further research.

EFFECTS OF PHYSICAL DISTANCE AND SOCIAL CLOSENESS IN VR AND TEXT ON SPATIAL DISTANCE ESTIMATION

How do mediated social interactions affect your perceptions of the world around you? We extend previous research that examines how mediated interactions affect spatial distance perception by comparing two explanatory theories: motivated perception and construal theory. In two studies, we contrast the effects of talking to a remote versus a co-located partner on perceptions of physical distance, comparing virtual reality (VR) and texting conditions. We demonstrate an interaction across media: participants who report feeling socially close to a conversational partner located in a distant city estimate that city to be closer. However, participants who report feeling more socially close to a co-located conversational partner estimate a larger distance to the city their partner is describing. We discuss the implications for media use in a period of increased virtual interactions.

EXPRESS: Comparing individual and collective management of referential choices in dialogue

Past research shows that when a discourse referent is mentioned repeatedly, it is usually introduced with a full NP and maintained with a reduced form such as a pronoun. Is this also the case in dialogue, where the same referent may be introduced by one person and maintained by another person? An experiment was conducted in which participants either told entire stories to each other or told stories together, thus enabling us to contrast situations in which characters were introduced and maintained by the same person (control condition) and situations in which the introduction and the maintaining of each character were performed by different people (alternating condition). Story complexity was also manipulated through the introduction of one or two characters in each story. We found that participants were less likely to use reduced forms to maintain referents in the alternating condition. The use of reduced forms also depended on the context in which the referent was maintained (in particular, first or second mention of a character) and on story complexity. These results shed light on how the pressure to signal understanding to one’s conversational partner affects referential choices throughout the interaction.

Motion captured realistic avatars are the future for social interaction in virtual reality

This study evaluated participant self-reported appraisal of social interactions with another person in virtual reality (VR) where their conversational partner was represented by a realistic avatar. We term the avatar as realistic because: 1. It was modelled to look like the person it represented, and 2. Full face and body motion capture was utilised so that the avatar mimicked the facial and body language of the conversational partner in real-time. We compared social interaction in VR with face-to-face interaction across two communicative contexts: 1. Getting acquainted conversation, and 2. A structured interview where the participant engaged in self-disclosure about positive and negative experiences. Overall, participants largely indicated they preferred face-to-face over VR communication. However, some participants did indicate a preference for VR communication, and an analysis of post-conversation ratings indicated no significant difference for rated enjoyment, understanding, self-disclosure, comfort, and awkwardness. The one rating where face-to-face was found to be superior was for perceived closeness. Most participants perceived frequent eye contact in both face-to-face and VR interaction, but typically more eye contact when face-to-face. Eye contact was positively associated with rated enjoyment, closeness, and comfort. Overall, our findings suggest that harnessing full face and body motion capture can make social interaction in VR as very similar to face-to-face interaction. We anticipate that VR social interaction is poised to become the next major technological evolution for human communication and suggest avenues for further research.

Limits to the Rational Production of Discourse Connectives

Rational accounts of language use such as the uniform information density hypothesis, which asserts that speakers distribute information uniformly across their utterances, and the rational speech act (RSA) model, which suggests that speakers optimize the formulation of their message by reasoning about what the comprehender would understand, have been hypothesized to account for a wide range of language use phenomena. We here specifically focus on the production of discourse connectives. While there is some prior work indicating that discourse connective production may be governed by RSA, that work uses a strongly gamified experimental setting. In this study, we aim to explore whether speakers reason about the interpretation of their conversational partner also in more realistic settings. We thereby systematically vary the task setup to tease apart effects of task instructions and effects of the speaker explicitly seeing the interpretation alternatives for the listener. Our results show that the RSA-predicted effect of connective choice based on reasoning about the listener is only found in the original setting where explicit interpretation alternatives of the listener are available for the speaker. The effect disappears when the speaker has to reason about listener interpretations. We furthermore find that rational effects are amplified by the gamified task setting, indicating that meta-reasoning about the specific task may play an important role and potentially limit the generalizability of the found effects to more naturalistic every-day language use.

Widespread recommendations can change our habits of hand-washing and physical distance during the COVID-19 pandemic

Background Habits and behaviors in everyday life currently need to be modified as quickly as possible due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Two of the most effective tools to prevent infection seem to be regular and thorough hand-washing and physical distancing during interpersonal interactions. Method Two hundred and eighty-four participants completed a short survey to investigate how previous habits regarding hand-washing and physical distancing have changed in the general population as a function of the current pandemic and the thereby increased information and constant recommendations regarding these behaviors. Results Participants aged 51 and older reported a greater change in everyday hand-washing behavior than younger participants. In addition, participants aged 31 and older selected significantly greater distances to have a conversation than younger participants. However, that was not the case if participants had to actively stop their conversational partner from approaching. Conclusion Participants aged 51 years and older seem to be well aware of their at-risk status during the current pandemic and might therefore be willing to change their behavior more strongly than younger survey participants. Nevertheless, they seem to struggle with enforcing the current rules towards others. The group aged between 31 and 50 years, however, reports a comparable level of fear, but no corresponding change in hand-washing behavior. Future surveys should try to provide more insight into why this might be the case.

Mexican slang ese “dude, buddy” and its Iberian Caló-Romani antecedents

Use of the demonstrative pronoun ese “that, that man” in familiar North American Spanish speech is traced to Andalusian Spanish and the influence of Caló, the cryptolect of the Iberian Roma. In early para-Romani, the inherited four-term deictic system (situational/contextual, general/specific) yields to the very differently organized Romance three-part paradigm (este, ese, aquel), as, concurrently, Caló locative adverbs often replace personal pronouns. Yet, even after the wholesale replacement of Caló demonstratives by Spanish forms, the function of an earlier deictic vocative phrasing is maintained in ese, to be understood as you, right there, my conversational partner.

Parkinson’s disease impacts feedback production during verbal communication

The current study sought to investigate whether people with Parkinson’s disease (PwPD) produce less feedback than typical people, thus potentially making it more difficult for them to reach mutual comprehension with their conversational partner. In order to do this, a matching task experiment was conducted during which an experimenter described abstract pictures to a participant, who was either a PwPD or a typical participant, so that he or she could organise these pictures in a grid. The participants could produce as much feedback as they liked. The analysis of the utterances produced by the participants revealed that PwPD produced less feedback than typical participants. This effect was mainly driven by two specific types of feedback: acknowledgment tokens and hesitations. From a theoretical perspective, this paper is one of the firsts to specifically document the production of feedback markers in PwPD. Clinical implications are also discussed.

Does sharing memories make us feel closer? The roles of memory type and culture

The present study investigated in a cross-cultural context whether sharing different types of memories would differentially influence perceived relationship closeness and how that, in turn, was related to psychological well-being. Participants (N = 410) from European American and Asian cultural backgrounds reported their feelings of closeness to a conversational partner in hypothetical scenarios following five types of information sharing: specific and general autobiographical memories, specific and general vicarious memories, and non-personal information. Asians felt closer to the conversational partner than did European Americans following all types of information sharing, consistent with the greater interdependent value orientation among Asians. While sharing autobiographical memories led to greater closeness than sharing vicarious memories for both groups, sharing specific autobiographical memories appeared most effective to develop relationship closeness for European Americans. Perceived relationship closeness following memory-sharing was positively associated with psychological well-being across cultures.

Involvement, trust and topic control in interpreter-mediated healthcare encounters

By examining audio-recorded and transcribed, naturally occurring discourse data, this article shows how participants communicate involvement in two interpreter- mediated healthcare encounters. The article demonstrates how the relational exchange in these encounters, each involving a Swedish-speaking care provider, a young mother (one Spanish speaking and one Russian speaking) and a professionally trained interpreter, is affected by the way each participant orients to one another as a conversational partner. The analysis also shows how primary participants’ orientation towards the interpreter as a conversational partner may have unexpected consequences for the interpreter’s degree of involvement and the participants’ control of conversational topics. Adding to previous studies of interpreter-mediated medical encounters explored as interaction, this article demonstrates the significance of shared and mutual focus between physicians and patients when it comes to building rapport and mutual trust across language barriers.