Constraining Content in Mediated Unstructured Social Interactions: Studies in the Wild

Abstract

When studying social interactions, robust data collection protocols can come at the expense of allowing a natural interaction to take place because of a rigid structure in the experimental scenario. This work seeks to explore the use of an interaction mediator as a tool to constrain the content of a social interaction without imposing an interaction structure. Two studies were conducted in different interaction contexts using children: a peer-peer interaction, and a teacher-child interaction. Given that no interaction structure is imposed, objective metrics to characterise behaviour prove difficult to apply. Qualitative analysis techniques, namely Conversation Analysis, are therefore used to study the dyadic interactions. Results confirm the role of the mediating device in providing interaction content without imposing interaction structure. This illustrates the potential role of such devices in manipulating social interactions to facilitate empirical interrogation.