Eye Contact Shown To Affect Conversation Patterns, Group
Problem-Solving Ability
:
“Dr. Roel Vertegaal, who is presenting a paper on eye
gaze at an international conference in New Orleans this week, has
found evidence to suggest a strong link between the amount of eye
contact people receive and their degree of participation in group
communications.”
the results would seem to buttress that
oldie-but-a-goodie,
“Beyond Being There”
:
“Hollan and Stornetta effectively argue that the
pursuit of face-to-face is a) often inappropriate, and b) destined
to fail. The premise behind this assumption is that a media
attempting to imitate face-to-face fails when communities only use
that media when f-to-f is not available. When this happens,
electronic communication is at a disadvantage relative to f-to-f.
They argue that “In telecommunications research perhaps we have
been building crutches rather than shoes;” we only use the crutch
when our fully functional leg is not available. The authors suggest
that researchers should instead begin building shoes, which augment
our legs, and we use them even when they are fully functional. They
astutely argue that there are potential advantages to electronic
communication that are not present in f-to-f. “For example, three
significant features of the new medium are its ability to support
asynchronous communication, anonymous communication, and to
automatically archive communication.””