|
 |
Overview |
|
|
Thirty years of research literature had shown that though collaborators may like to have a video connection during teleconferences, its presence does not affect the quality of long-distance collaboration.
CREW investigators wondered whether these findings held true when, for example, some of the participants in a conference were speaking a language that was not their native tongue.
|
Methods |
|
|
To find out, they set up a study that compaired pairs of native speakers of English with pairs of non-native English speakers. One of the subjects had to describe a location on a map that included confusing elements that needed to be explained.
One-half of the pairs of subjects communicated through an audio link only. The other half had audio combined with video of their partner's face and hands.
|
Results |
|
|
The results showed that when communication is strained, the presence of video significantly enhances comprehension. The non-native speakers performed much better when they saw each other as well as heard them. Whereas, native speakers of English did as well with and without the video.
The study findings are important for cross-cultural organizations that hold distributed meetings, such as multinational corporations. Video serves several functions in such meetings:
- It allows everyone to immediately identify each new speaker.
- It enforces a level of attentiveness.
- It provides visual clues as to where the import of content lies — through eye contact, for example, a speaker directs a particular point to a given participant.
CREW investigators plan to extend their work in this area to look at other situations in which communication is strained and to examine the usefulness of video when other cultural differences are present (e.g., communication between so-called "gesture" cultures, such as those of Italy and China, and "non-gesture" cultures, such as that of Japan).
|
|
