Chat Partners Research Articles

Learners’ emotions in foreign language text chats with native speakers

The paper examines the emotions of 15 learners of Japanese across seven weekly online text chats in Japanese with native Japanese speakers, and the factors that caused their emotions. The data came from questionnaires about the learners’ biodata and previous experiences of text chats, weekly reports about their chats, transcripts of the chats, and occasional questions in e-mail exchanges between the researcher and the learners to clarify certain statements in the weekly reports. The learners’ positive and negative emotions and the causes of those emotions were coded and counted for descriptive quantitative analysis. The learners reported both positive and negative emotions within each individual chat as well as across the seven weeks. Enjoyment was the most frequently occurring of the positive emotions, while a sense of difficulty was most often reported among the negative emotions. Both positive and negative emotions changed over the seven weeks. The chat process and issues with the Japanese language tended to be triggers for negative emotions, with positive emotions likely to be triggered by the chat partners, and also by discussions of hobbies, similar interests and culture. It would appear to be important for learners to develop a rapport with their partner through chat communications and to avoid focusing too much on their own limited foreign language proficiency in order to increase their positive emotions in online text chats, thus improving the experience and leading to greater learning.

Confidence is sexy and it can be trained: Examining male social confidence in initial, opposite-sex interactions.

We investigated whether men's social confidence in an initial, opposite-sex chatting context can be improved through a video tutorial and the extent to which being perceived as socially confident results in being seen as more romantically desirable and worthy of future contact. Women chatted with men who had received or not received a tutorial on how to handle speed-dating chats (Study 1: N=129; Study 2: N=60) or with male targets selected for having high versus moderate confidence in handling initial, opposite-sex encounters (Study 3: N=46). Tutorial-trained men felt more confident going into the chats and they, as well as male targets selected for their confidence, were perceived by female chat partners to be higher in social confidence, status, and dominance. However, only perceptions of social confidence were further associated with being perceived as more romantically desirable (as a short-term mate) and worthy of future contact. Findings indicate that social confidence is trainable and that other-perceived social confidence can impact the outcomes of social interactions.

L2 feelings through interaction in a Japanese-English online chat exchange

ABSTRACT Purpose Communication technology is used in diverse ways in our everyday lives. This research aims to fill a gap in research into L2 learner psychology connected with using online communication tools such as messaging platforms. Approach The article focuses on practitioner research into feelings experienced during online L2 text chat. Twenty-one undergraduates studying English as a Foreign Language at a university in Japan, and nineteen Japanese as a Foreign Language undergraduates from a university in Australia participated. In chat sessions, learners had thirty minutes interacting in their first language, and thirty minutes with their second language. Longitudinal, qualitative data was collected over the seven-week exchange through reflective session reports. Findings Analysis uncovered seven positively- and four negatively-valenced feelings experienced through L2 online chat. In both the EFL and JFL groups, mentions of positive amounted to more than double those of negative emotions. These feelings connected with various object-foci such as topics about culture, differences in life experiences, hobbies, linguistic aspects of the L2, L2 identity, chat partners and the chat process itself. Originality The article builds on existing research by adding greater qualitative detail to understandings of feelings emergent through online L2 learning.

Co-viewers support participation in video chat interactions, but live experiences promote richer word learning for 24- to 36-month-olds in the USA

ABSTRACTThe 2016 recommendations by the American Academy of Pediatricsto limit screen time for young children now provide exceptions for moderate video chat usage. We tested whether co-viewer supported face-to-face live interactions uniquely promote 24- to 36-month-old children’s participation and learning compared to co-viewer supported on-screen video chat interactions. An adult co-viewer explained the relevance of a social partner’s information and helped children see the partner as connected to real events and objects. Results showed that the partner condition impacted learning: children learned and transferred more novel words in the live condition compared to the video chat condition, and this difference was greatest for younger children. However, children participated similarly with live and video chat partners: there were no differences in imitating actions and responding promptly to the partner’s bids. Results therefore demonstrated that even when children experience media with a supportive co-viewer and even when they interact with the on-screen information, they nevertheless learn more from live interactions compared to video chat interactions.

Chatbots for Touristic German Learning at University

This paper aims to discuss some relevant evaluation criteria and suggestions for the improvement of text-based chatbots for tourism-specific German as Foreign Language classes in an academic setting. After outlining some findings of the research on chatbot-based language learning and some requirements for future professionals in tourism, the paper offers an analysis of two chatbots (i. e. Duolingo Bots and Lufthansa BestPrice) considering their use for touristic German learning at university. The selected findings show that it is still problematic for chatbots to switch the chat partners’ role and to give high-quality feedback on users’ input.

Chinese language learners’ anxiety toward chat partners in computer-mediated communication

AbstractStudies have shown foreign language anxiety (FLA) can negatively impact learners’ performance in the classroom, but learners experience less FLA during computer-mediated communication (CMC) activities. Although it has been documented that communicating with native speakers (NSs) can make foreign language learners more anxious, very few empirical studies have compared learners’ anxiety levels toward different online chat partners. The current study investigated intermediate Chinese language learners’ FLA in online text CMC activities chatting with NSs and non-native speakers (NNSs). The quantitative data analyses showed that there was a significant difference in the anxiety level between chatting with NSs and NNSs in text-based CMC: chatting with NSs made Chinese learners more anxious than chatting with NNSs. Language confidence and partner familiarity were the two main factors mediating the anxiety. Practical pedagogical implications and future research directions were discussed.

Investigating the Language of Sexting on the Social Media and Its Impact on Spousal Relationships in Nigeria

Several scholarly works abound on the language of sexting and how it affects users’ lives. This study is an attempt to investigate the language of sexting on the social media and its impact on spousal relationship in Nigeria. Sexting is defined here as the sending and receiving of sexually inclined messages or pictures via any of the social media. We have purposively selected a screenshot sexting message of a popular Nigerian comedian. The methodology adopted is eclectic. We use pragmatic tools with insights from the epistemological and critical tools of philosophy. We also use ideas from semiotics to analyse the smileys in the text. We also conducted interviews with purposively selected educated married Nigerians to study the printed screenshot message and interpret the meanings they can deduce from the message. Findings reveal that the language of sexting is highly of coded forms. The discourse strategies used include: slang, ellipsis and smileys. The conversational pattern reveals a flouting of the conversational maxims of quantity and relevance. A lot of shared beliefs are also foregrounded in the use of the elliptical sign and slang words. The message attached to the screenshot message is a pract of warning with 3 speech acts: declarative, assertive and directive. Sexting is a common feature of new trends on the social media. It serves several functions for the chat partners. If the motivation for sexting is not understood, its practice could generate crises among spouses. Sexting opens up different angles for linguistic interpretation and its psychological realities cannot be generalized.

Recommending topics in dialogue

Several types of online chat system have been developed; however, there exist no recommendation systems for the recommendation of topics suitable for discussion with a given individual at a particular time. This paper proposes a hot-topic recommendation system based on analysis of the tweets posted by the user, his/her chat partners, and similar users of his/her chat partners, as well as hashtags trending in Twitter. In experiments, the proposed system, which is based on the well-known Latent Dirichlet Allocation (LDA) algorithm, was shown to outperform existing recommendation systems with regard to computational efficiency as well as prediction accuracy.

Online erotica usage as a mediator between internet addiction and engagement in risky online sexual behaviors

In this study, we examined the links between Internet addiction, engagement in online erotica (including pornography usage and usage of sex-based Internet chat sites), and engagement in risky online sexual behaviors, in this case, sending sexually-explicit pictures to those known only online (i.e., sexting) and expecting to engage in offline sex with those known only online. In our sample of 276 U.S. adults, men engaged in most of these online sexual activities significantly more than women, but women were just as likely as men to send sexually-explicit pictures to online chat partners, and they were also just as likely as men to demonstrate signs of internet addiction. More importantly, using pornography and sex site usage were sequential mediators in the relationship between Internet addiction and engagement in risky online sexual activities. Moreover, whereas pornography viewing alone was not a predictor of risky online sexual activities, when the behavior escalated to engaging in Internet sex chat sites it did predict engagement in sexting or expectations of offline sex with those known only online. Based on these findings, we suggest that although these behaviors might be considered under one umbrella of online sexual activity, it might be useful from an intervention and treatment standpoint to target specific online sexual activities (e.g., sex site usage).

“I know you’ve seen it!” Individual and social factors for users’ chatting behavior on Facebook

An online survey (N=207) investigated how the seen-function influences users’ answering behavior in Facebook chatting. The seen-function is a chat-feature that provides more transparency over the course of a chat conversation and thus may also intensify the mutual awareness of chat partners. Based on the need to belong and fear of ostracism as motivators for user behavior it was hypothesized that users with a higher value of these personality traits would have a higher expectation for others to answer immediately and a higher perceived obligation to answer immediately. Indeed, fear of ostracism and need to belong were positively related to perceived obligations to answer and expectations toward chat partners. However, the perceived obligation to answer immediately was higher than the average expectation toward others to do so. Looking for different clusters of users, we found three groups of users in the data set that differ in terms of their expectations and perceived obligations.

Oral approach-avoidance: affective consequences of muscular articulation dynamics.

Can mouth movements shape attitudes? When people articulate different consonants (e.g., B or K) they press the tongue and the lips against various spots in the mouth. This allows for construction of words that feature systematic wanderings of consonantal stricture spots either from the front to the rear (inward; e.g., BENOKA) or from the rear to the front (outward; e.g., KENOBA) of the mouth. These wanderings of muscular strictures resemble the oral kinematics during either deglution (swallowing-like, inward movement) or expectoration (spitting-like, outward movement). Thus, we predicted that the articulation of inward and outward words induces motivational states associated with deglutition and expectoration--namely, approach and avoidance--which was tested in 9 experiments (total N = 822). Inward words were preferred over outward words, being labeled as nonsense words (Experiments 1, 4, 5, 6, and 9), company names (Experiment 2), or person names (Experiments 3, 7, and 8), with control words falling in between (Experiment 5). As a social-behavioral consequence, ostensible chat partners were more often chosen to interact with when having inward compared to outward names (Experiment 7). The effect was found in German-speaking (Experiments 1-5) and English-speaking (Experiment 6) samples, and it occurred even under silent reading (all experiments) and for negatively labeled targets (names of villains; Experiment 8). Showing articulation simulations as being the causal undercurrent, this effect was absent in aphasia patients who lacked covert subvocalizations (Experiment 9).

Offline social identity and online chat partner selection

This study examines whether the impact of offline identities on computer-mediated communication is stable across different social contexts or whether it depends on which identity aspect is salient. Field experiments with 206 teenagers tested the influence of gendered, ethnic, youth and personalized identities on teenagers' chat behaviour and cognitions. The findings show that offline identity varies in its relation to Internet self-efficacy but not chat partner selection. Self-efficacy differed significantly between boys and girls when youth and gender identities were emphasized but not when stressing personal identity. Across conditions, teenagers were most likely to choose chat partners from similar ethnic and opposite sex backgrounds. This partly supports the Social Identification and Deindividuation framework and argues that offline identities impact online behaviour and self-perception but that this effect depends on which identity aspect is activated.

Can Mate Choice Strategies Explain Sex Differences?

Online deception is a phenomenon on the Internet, facilitated by restrictions on communication channels. As communication on the Internet is largely exchanged in textual form, deception about personal data such as sex, age, and appearance can be difficult to detect. Research on online deception has been focused thus far on what deceivers lie about and what motivates them to do so. Little is known about how persons feel when they are deceived in an online environment and about whether sex differences exist in the intensity of those feelings. Furthermore, research on online deception largely lacks a theoretical basis. In the current studies, differences between the sexes with respect to their reaction to online deception about sex, age, and appearance were analyzed in a framework of sex-specific mating strategies predicted by evolutionary theory. The results of a structured online interview showed that sex-specific differences in reaction to online gender switching and appearance deception can be explained by mating strategies. Gender switching was found to be more disturbing when committed by a chat partner of the same sex than when committed by a chat partner of the opposite sex. Appearance deception was found to be more disturbing when committed by chat partners of the opposite sex. The data on age deception were not in line with the theory of mate-choice strategies. Even a second online questionnaire study could not entirely clarify the issue but did reveal interfering factors (such as online harassment, legal issues, life expectancy) that probably influence the effect driven by evolution.

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