The COVID-19 pandemic made them popular and today we have them more than normalized. Video calls are already a very common communication tool in work environments, especially in those that have adopted a teleworking system, whether hybrid or total, and when we want to talk to family and friends when we cannot do it face to face . Now, a group of scientists from the Radboud University of Nijmegen, in the Netherlands, has found the reason why when the image is blurred, we tend to shout and alter our gestures to make ourselves understood.
“The gestures we make when speaking, as well as other visual signals such as facial expressions, are really important and integrated aspects of our way of communicating,” says Dr. James Trujillo, first author of the research. “If your Zoom connection gives you poor video, remember to articulate both your speech and your gestures.”
Trujillo says that previous research has shown that when we do not hear our interlocutor well because there is noise, we speak louder. In the recent study, researchers have found that when a video call is very noisy, people gesture more . “There seems to be a general tendency to put more effort into speech and gestures when our communication is interrupted by something, like noise or a poor video connection,” he said.
The study has been published in the Royal Society Open Science journal. In it, Trujillo and his team explain how they analyzed video calls between 20 pairs of participants. In each pair, the participants sat in separate rooms and had a casual, unscripted conversation over a Zoom-type video call for 40 minutes.
Over the course of the call, the video quality varied through 10 levels ranging from excellent quality to completely blurry . Half of the couples experienced an improvement in video quality throughout the call, and the other half experienced a worsening. The video quality during the call at each level was the same for both participants.
The researchers tracked the participants’ gestures and aspects of their speech during the calls. What they saw was that as the video quality worsened, the participants initially reduced their arm and body movements while conversing. However, as the quality deteriorated further, they moved more. The pace, speed, and size of gestures increased as the video quality decreased , but then decreased as it deteriorated further. This, according to Trujillo, suggested that, at least initially, the gestures were larger but “cleaner”.
The team added that when gestures were not used, speech was not affected by decreased visibility. But when the gestures were used, the volume increased up to 5 decibels when the video quality initially dropped, and then stayed at this higher level when the video quality deteriorated further, i.e. when the gestures were no longer useful. .
According to Trujillo, the results show that communication is not limited to speech , but that, in the case of spoken language, it is an integrated system of visual and auditory signals that work together to convey meaning.
“To compensate for (worse video quality), people ‘exaggerate’ the shape of their gestures to help their interlocutor recognize the meaning of the gesture, even when they can’t see it as well as normal,” he said.
“Although speaking louder probably won’t help, the fact that people do it shows how integrated these systems are, especially since people only speak louder when there are gestures ,” added Trujillo. “They know that the gestures that are produced are vital for their communication, but their interlocutor is going to have a harder time seeing them. So they increase the strength of the other signal: speech.”
Reference:
Trujillo, J et al. 2022. A multi-scale investigation of the human communication system’s response to visual disruption. Royal Society Open Science. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1098/rsos.211489
