Final Abstract for “Talking with Half a Voice”:

As the technology we cling to continues to advance, new research is needed to track changes in communication patterns.  Noncontact communication is becoming increasingly popular, but through these means so many nonverbal cues get lost.  In this study, gesture frequency was analyzed in 28 college-aged participants (22 women and six men) throughout three different communication scenarios:  face-to-face, typing on the Internet, and speaking into a voice-chat program over the Internet.  A significant decrease in gesture was observed between the first to the second test conditions, and a significant increase in gesture was seen between the second to the third test conditions.  Gesture frequency was also significantly lower in the third test condition in comparison with the first.  However, gesture was still present in all of the test conditions.  These findings are consistent with previous research done in the field of nonverbal communication, and suggests a dependency on nonverbal cues despite the knowledge that the recipient of the conversation cannot see or interpret the gestures.

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Despite the small sample size, I was thrilled to find that my results were significant!  If ever possible, I would love to repeat this study with a focus on facial expressions instead of gesture, since typing severely limits the amount of gesture possible in an online conversation.  I look forward with sharing more about my project in the Showcase of Summer Research!  Thank you to the Department of Psychology at the College of William & Mary for the use of their facilities, and to the Swem Library Media Center for the use of their videography equipment.  Also, thank you to Christopher T. Ball and M. Christine Porter for their help in recruiting participants.  I am extremely grateful to Lisa Grimes and the Roy R. Charles Center for their funding and support of the James Monroe Scholars here at the College of William & Mary.  Lastly, I would like to thank my advisor, Ann M. Reed, for her guidance and support in designing this project; her comments and insight were invaluable to the completion of this study.

I can’t believe that I only have a week left!  Well, it may be more than that…but more on that in a moment.  I finished testing about a week ago, and worked with a grand total of 28 participants.  I was aiming to have 40 participants, but I definitely think I underestimated how hard it would be to recruit.  Even after flyering every resident door on campus, emailing all of the research students, and then flyering again, I still came in under quota.  I am very thankful though, to Professor Ball and Professor Porter of the Psychology Department.  They allowed me to discuss my research with their classes and offered extra credit to those who participated.  The majority of my participants came from their classes, so I definitely would not have been able to do this without them!

This past week has been quite busy.  The Media Center has been really great, and not only let me borrow equipment for an extended period of time, but they also converted my miniDV tapes to DVD.  Since then, I’ve been re-watching all of the participants’ stories, recording how many gestures each person used in each situation.  All I have left to do now, is actually to run my statistical analysis in SPSS and write up the results.  I am definitely nearing the end, but it would not surprise me if I extended my time working on this project.  Because this is the only major research project I will have completed during my first three years and W&M, I want to use this paper as a writing sample for Graduate School.  Talk about pressure!  So, I will most likely be tweaking and revising my final paper for a few weeks after my 7 week timeline is up.  I am so grateful for this opportunity to complete an independent research project, and really experience what it’s like to do academic research.  I’ve learned so much about how everything works, from IRB approvals to running my own lab!  I’ll post my final results in a few weeks!

As the end of week 4 quickly approaches, it occurs to me that I am over halfway through my 7 week timeline!  After the remainder of today’s testing, I will have had 24 participants.  While I was originally hoping to recruit 40 participants, I will be happy if I can pass 30!  Recruiting has been much more difficult than I had originally expected.  I’ve flyered the campus dorms twice, send emails to the Monroe and Research listservs, and even teamed up with two Psychology professors who agreed to offer their students extra credit if they participated in my study!  Talk about a great incentive (in addition to my own participation reward of Ben & Jerry’s ice cream)!  My advice to anyone that hopes to research on human subjects:  start recruiting immediately after receiving approval from the PHSC.  Teaming up with professors is a great way to have easy access to students, but it definitely helps to talk with them as early as possible.  Tracking down professors in the summer can be challenging:  they flit from their classroom to their lab, and are very hard to catch in their office!

So far, I have avoided any major potholes in my methodology.  However, I have had to change the test conditions a bit.  Instead of using video chat as the third communication option, the participants now use a voice chat (like Skype or Google Voice).  It turns out that not many students seem to actively use video chat, and so we were having trouble finding a way around this.  Maybe my time abroad last semester made me more reliant on the use of video chat than the average student, but I definitely thought it was a more common form of communication!  Google Voice has turned out to be a wonderful tool for this project.  Anyone with a Google Account (i.e. any William & Mary student since our WMApps is run through Google) can use this tool to call any phone in the US for free from their computer.  How awesome is that?  I feel like I am a walking advertisement for Google Voice!  With the use of this tool, participants can be put in a “Skype-like” setting without having to have a friend online at the same time.  It’s brilliant!

Looking forward, I have one more week of testing left, and then I start the long, tedious process of converting my videotapes to DVD.  Thank goodness I have the awesome Media Center to help me!  From there, I’ll run data analysis and then sit down to the daunting task of writing up my paper.  Even though I’m past the halfway point, I feel like there is still so much to accomplish!