The Effects of Linguistic Background and Visibility on Conversational Partners’ Communicative Success and Attitudes in Online Conversations.
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2021-06-21
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en
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Online communication and digital conferences have become increasingly relevant and replace face-to-face meetings in several sectors. This process is not only rooted in the ongoing pandemic but has already been described as a long-term development by various researchers. Therefore, we wanted to investigate which conditions in a digital setting have an impact on the overall communication’s effectiveness. In this study, an experiment was conducted to gain a better insight into these effects. The experiment involved 52 participants that were further divided into 26 pairs. These pairs took part in a spot-the-difference game which had the goal to identify as many differences as possible. However, these pairs engaged in these games under varying conditions. Some pairs shared the same linguistic background whereas others did not and some pairs were able to see each other via webcam and other dyads did not have this option. However, not only their performance was observed but also their attitude towards each other. The latter was assessed by making use of questionnaires that analyzed the questioned person’s prosocial behavior and likeability towards the interlocutor, their perceived task successfulness as well as their perceived communicative success. Although the study involved many different variables there were not many significant differences. The most relevant finding was that when interlocutors could see each other, their overall perceived communicative success was perceived as higher. The results of the current study suggest that visibility should be a standard in videoconferencing and that attitudes towards the conversational partner are one of the key factors of communicative success.
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Faculteit der Letteren