London Virtual Interaction Workshop

This work shop was organised by Antonia Hamilton and  Sylvia Xuini Pan, UCL Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience  hamilton lab.

Why did I attend? I study social interaction when it is mediated by a computer and takes  takes place asynchronously between distance students who have no previous knowledge of each other -  I study virtual social interaction. Many of the contributors to this workshop are studying aspects of social interaction (eye gaze, body movement, facial expression, sound) that are not available in online contexts that use computer mediated communication (CMC) but they did address processes that are common to each such as joint attention, affiliation, trust, reciprocity, turn taking (a process that is disrupted when communication is asynchronous) and the most challenging concept of them all,  synchrony. Synchrony was a concept that pervaded most of the talks therefore I was both reassured and disappointed when questions posed later in the conference - why is synchrony important for social interaction? is there a neural explanation? could not be answered by any of the delegates, apparently

What are my headlines from this event.

•   Be alert to circular reasoning (delegate)

•   Realism is not a realistic criterion - realism is a relative notion -challenge the critical parameters and values that matter (Beatrice de Gelder)

•   Joint attention - KNOWING we are both looking is the critical factor (Leonard Schilbach)

•   Important to think about social scaffolds i.e put the social into social interaction (Daniel Richardson)

•   Social interaction is a one trial problem ( Antonio Hamilton)

Ideas that arose for me that I need to pursue in order to study social interaction in a learning context

For joint tasks decision there may be a difference between situations that require a right/wrong answer as opposed to the construction of knowledge and production of a joint artefact ( the processes that underpin group work in FE and HE and organisations ) -an idea stimulated by Bahador Bahrami

An experience that is often voiced by students that use CMC is that the others involved do not seem to be real.  Therefore I need to explore the work on plausibility (as described by Mel Slater).

Antonia Hamilton seeded the final discussion session by suggesting a model for how synergy is achieved between the study of social interaction by psychologists and the HCI folk who provide the technology behind virtual interaction. Could I take anything from this that would help me develop a synergy between virtual interaction in practice ( i.e. students using CMC for group work ) and theoretical models of social interaction that are neuro-scientifically plausible?

Thanks to all those who contributed list of contributors - you  all provided great value