Communication Cues Research Articles

Postnatal depressive symptoms in mothers of infants at high risk of cerebral palsy: the role of delayed infant communicative development

Purpose Recent diagnostic advantages enable detection of cerebral palsy (CP) in infants before five months of age. Parents of children with CP often face mental health problems, but specific knowledge for infancy is needed. In this study, depressive symptoms in mothers of 16-week-old infants and associations with infant development were investigated. Materials and methods This cross-sectional study involves 56 families, 22 high-risk and 34 infants without risk of CP. High-risk-CP was identified following international clinical guidelines. We assessed infant cognitive and language development using the Bayley-III and motor development using the Alberta Infant Motor Scale. Maternal depressive symptoms were self-reported using the Edinburgh Postnatal Depression Scale. Results Mothers of CP high-risk infants were 15.6 times more likely to experience risk of postnatal depression compared to mothers of infants without risk. Additionally, linear regression analyses showed that having an infant at high-risk of CP (β = .359, p = .006) and delayed language development (β = −0.510, p < .001) were associated with increased maternal depressive symptoms. Conclusions We recommend systematic screening of postnatal depressive symptoms following detection of high-risk-CP in infants. Early interventions could include a mother-infant interactional component to support caregivers in interpreting and responding to infant communicative cues.

AI-Teacher Teaching Task Spectrum in Action

The AI-Teacher Teaching Tasks Spectrum (AITTTS) was conceived as a way to understand the relationship between human teachers and the ever-evolving AI technologies in education. This study demonstrates how the AITTTS framework can be operationalised into a tangible intervention, showcasing the design models and practical applications of the AITTTS in real-world educational settings. By categorising teaching tasks into a spectrum, the AITTTS delineates the roles that AI and human teachers can play, providing a structured and nuanced understanding of their collaboration. As a result of the practical application of the AITTTS, a design model was birthed in this study. It highlights various aspects of holistic student outcomes such as positive electronic nonverbal communication (eNVC) cues, adaptive learning paths, and interactive learning responses as elements by which AI should be designed. By providing a structured approach for educators to incorporate AI tools and interventions in their learning environments, this research lays the groundwork for further exploration of the synergistic relationship between AI and human teachers in modern education. This framework can serve as a guide for educators to develop and implement AI-enhanced teaching strategies, fostering a more dynamic and responsive educational landscape.

Applying a systemic approach for better outcomes

AbstractThis paper demonstrates the added value of utilizing a systemic approach to financial planning, which includes understanding how individuals make financial decisions and how these decisions are influenced by their experiences and the broader systems in which they exist. Systems theory is too broad of a topic to cover in one paper. The scope of this paper is to describe the key systems' concepts of interconnectedness, the whole is greater than the sum of its parts, homeostasis, and differentiation of self that have direct applications to financial planning. A case study illustrates how these concepts and tools, such as the genogram and shifting the conversation from content to process, can be utilized in financial planning. Through therapeutic communication (e.g., listening actively and recognizing the hidden cues in a client's communication), financial planners can uncover and address systemic issues impacting the financial planning process. Financial planners will learn key concepts of systems theory, gain tools for how to incorporate systems' concepts into practice, and be prepared to take an active role in the next evolution of financial planning.

Discerning personhood through lena‐dena: Disability professionals, ethics, and communication

AbstractThis article looks at practices of discernment in disability spaces in India by analyzing (hierarchical) relational contexts in which disability professionals and disabled people in India interact. We argue that discernment, which we explore through lena‐dena (giving and taking), allows us to analyze the ethical stakes of processes of communication, interpreting, and facilitation. Vaidya analyzes how special educators make broad discernments about intellectually disabled people by interpreting their unconventional and nonlinguistic communicative cues. In contrast, Friedner examines how speech and language therapists that work with deaf children make narrow discernments regarding what counts as language and perform the labor of training deaf children to communicate in the normatively correct way—that is, using speech. While disability professionals produce specific kinds of personhood for disabled people through their practices of discernment, they also end up discerning themselves in the process as professionals with difficult yet rewarding jobs. We conclude by discussing a program for individuals with intellectual disabilities where both authors conducted ethnographic research wherein disability professionals discerned disabled people as having social needs and desires on par with nondisabled people and created enabling environments, scaffolded activities, and facilitated conversations to produce and enable complex personhood for them.

Reduced on-line speech gesture integration during multimodal language processing in adults with moderate-severe traumatic brain injury: Evidence from eye-tracking

BackgroundLanguage is multimodal and situated in rich visual contexts. Language is also incremental, unfolding moment-to-moment in real time, yet few studies have examined how spoken language interacts with gesture and visual context during multimodal language processing. Gesture is a rich communication cue that is integrally related to speech and often depicts concrete referents from the visual world. Using eye-tracking in an adapted visual world paradigm, we examined how participants with and without moderate-severe traumatic brain injury (TBI) use gesture to resolve temporary referential ambiguity. MethodsParticipants viewed a screen with four objects and one video. The speaker in the video produced sentences (e.g., “The girl will eat the very good sandwich”), paired with either a meaningful gesture (e.g., sandwich-holding gesture) or a meaningless grooming movement (e.g., arm scratch) at the verb “will eat.” We measured participants’ gaze to the target object (e.g., sandwich), a semantic competitor (e.g., apple), and two unrelated distractors (e.g., piano, guitar) during the critical window between movement onset in the gesture modality and onset of the spoken referent in speech. ResultsBoth participants with and without TBI were more likely to fixate the target when the speaker produced a gesture compared to a grooming movement; however, relative to non-injured participants, the effect was significantly attenuated in the TBI group. DiscussionWe demonstrated evidence of reduced speech-gesture integration in participants with TBI relative to non-injured peers. This study advances our understanding of the communicative abilities of adults with TBI and could lead to a more mechanistic account of the communication difficulties adults with TBI experience in rich communication contexts that require the processing and integration of multiple co-occurring cues. This work has the potential to increase the ecological validity of language assessment and provide insights into the cognitive and neural mechanisms that support multimodal language processing.

EMI AND ELF IN TEACHING LANGUAGES OTHER THAN ENGLISH

The increasing global mobility has led to a rise in multilingual classrooms, making foreign language teaching more complex. In such environments, using students’ native languages to teach foreign languages has become problematic. This challenge is even more pronounced when teaching languages other than English (LOTEs) in multilingual settings, where relying on a common native language is no longer feasible. This is especially true for high-context languages, which depend heavily on contextual and non-verbal cues for communication. These languages often convey implicit information, requiring a deep understanding of context, shared experiences, and cultural references for effective communication. Examples of high-context languages include Japanese, Chinese, Korean, Thai, Arabic, and Spanish.

The eyes have it: How do gender cues in wine labels influence U.S. women wine consumers?

Little is known about women wine consumers’ reactions to gender cues in marketing communication despite their increasing purchasing power. This research examines the effects of gender cues (feminine vs. masculine) in wine labels on women wine consumers' attitudes, sensory expectations, sensory evaluations, and purchase intentions. Two online experiments and one field test involving 462 valid responses from U.S. women consumers reveal that they hold more favorable attitudes and intentions towards feminine (vs. masculine) wine labels. The moderating effects of in-group gender identification and wine knowledge were discussed. This study responds to calls for more research about women consumers in the hospitality field and extends the application of gender schema theory to hospitality literature. The findings offer updated knowledge on how to approach gender in hospitality marketing, particularly wine marketing. This research enriches hospitality literature in terms of gender marketing and provides substantial practical implications for the wine industry.

You talkin’ to me? Functional breed selection may have fundamentally influenced dogs’ sensitivity to human verbal communicative cues

BackgroundThe ability to learn from humans via observation was considered to be equally present across properly socialized dogs. We showed recently that cooperative working breeds learned from a human demonstrator more effectively. We hypothesized that functional breed selection could affect sensitivity to human attention-eliciting behavior. Accordingly, we ran the first ever study on dogs that compared the effect of ostensive and neutral verbal communication in a social learning scenario. We used the detour paradigm around a transparent V-shaped fence with either ostensive (addressing the receiver both with words and specific, attention-eliciting prosody) or neutral speech (monotonous reciting of a short poem) demonstration. The other features (gestures, movement) of the demonstration sequence were kept identical between the two conditions. We tested (N = 70) companion dogs from 17 cooperative and 16 independent breeds in three 1-min trials. Subjects had to obtain the reward by detouring around the fence.ResultsDetour latencies of the cooperative dogs improved after both ostensive and neutral speech demonstrations. The independent dogs did not improve their detour latency in either of the conditions. Remarkably, ostensive verbal utterances elicited longer relative looking time towards the demonstrator, cooperative dogs looked longer at the demonstrator, and longer looking time resulted in more successful detours.ConclusionsOur study provides the first indication that functional breed selection had a significant impact on dogs’ sensitivity to ostensive human communication, which, apart from being crucially important for social learning from humans, until now was considered as a uniformly present heritage of domestication in dogs.Graphical

The Disparate Prosocial Implications of Ongoing Entertainment Health Media Exposure: A Multi-Malady Stigma Communication Comparison

ABSTRACT Entertainment media is observed to influence perceptions toward those managing major health conditions. In this study, a U.S. representative sample Qualtrics survey (N = 599) is conducted to how routine exposure to illnesses of notable public health concern is comparatively associated with potentially disparate mediated contact outcomes on stereotype content model and reasoned-action approach-related social perceptions and inclinations. Supporting mediated contact premises, evidence suggests largely prosocial outcomes related to routine entertainment health media exposure (e.g. enhanced attitudes, warmth, and social distance perceptions), though health identities stereotypically linked with stigma communication cues (e.g. peril, etiology) were least associated with prosocial attributions.

Reshaping cyclist mobility: Understanding the impact of autonomous vehicles on urban bicycle users

Autonomous Vehicles (AVs) present a jarring new normal for negotiation on public streets. Current communication and interaction stand to be disrupted with the presence of AVs. Active transport users, specifically bicycle users, rely on human communication and subtle cues to feel confident when negotiating with other road users. Shifts in communicability with AVs presents a unique challenge for bicycle users. It remains unclear how AVs will impact urban bicycle users. This paper employs a mixed-methods approach to understanding impacts that AVs have on urban bicycle users in four test sites with varying levels of traffic stress. Interviews and focus groups were used across different traffic stress scenarios in three countries to understand how bicycle users will be impacted by AVs in real-world scenarios. The results represent a pioneering cross-section of four bicycle cultures’ exposure to AVs. Results universally show that, compared to conventionally operated vehicles, an enduring sense of unease remains unresolved with AVs and that shifting focus to bicycle user experiences and prioritizing the needs of a diverse population of non-occupants will be critical. If AVs are not deployed responsibly and responsively, they could turn bicycle users away from cycling in a streetscape where active transport users are already marginalized.

Multimodal Affective Communication Analysis: Fusing Speech Emotion and Text Sentiment Using Machine Learning

Affective communication, encompassing verbal and non-verbal cues, is crucial for understanding human interactions. This study introduces a novel framework for enhancing emotional understanding by fusing speech emotion recognition (SER) and sentiment analysis (SA). We leverage diverse features and both classical and deep learning models, including Gaussian naive Bayes (GNB), support vector machines (SVMs), random forests (RFs), multilayer perceptron (MLP), and a 1D convolutional neural network (1D-CNN), to accurately discern and categorize emotions in speech. We further extract text sentiment from speech-to-text conversion, analyzing it using pre-trained models like bidirectional encoder representations from transformers (BERT), generative pre-trained transformer 2 (GPT-2), and logistic regression (LR). To improve individual model performance for both SER and SA, we employ an extended dynamic Bayesian mixture model (DBMM) ensemble classifier. Our most significant contribution is the development of a novel two-layered DBMM (2L-DBMM) for multimodal fusion. This model effectively integrates speech emotion and text sentiment, enabling the classification of more nuanced, second-level emotional states. Evaluating our framework on the EmoUERJ (Portuguese) and ESD (English) datasets, the extended DBMM achieves accuracy rates of 96% and 98% for SER, 85% and 95% for SA, and 96% and 98% for combined emotion classification using the 2L-DBMM, respectively. Our findings demonstrate the superior performance of the extended DBMM for individual modalities compared to individual classifiers and the 2L-DBMM for merging different modalities, highlighting the value of ensemble methods and multimodal fusion in affective communication analysis. The results underscore the potential of our approach in enhancing emotional understanding with broad applications in fields like mental health assessment, human–robot interaction, and cross-cultural communication.

A novel mixed reality remote collaboration system with adaptive generation of instructions

Mixed Reality (MR) remote collaboration supports a shared workspace and various non-verbal communication cues that enable remote experts to express ideas in an immersive Virtual Reality (VR) space to guide local workers in industrial physical tasks by creating Augmented Reality (AR) instructions, such as remote assembly/disassembly guidance, emergency maintenance, and training. However, due to the information non-symmetrical caused by geographical distribution, it can be challenging and high-workload for remote experts to create clear and detailed AR instructions for local workers to match spatial relationships with the local workspace, while comprehensively considering the situation information (e.g., task-related objects and partner’s environment) in complex industrial physical tasks. Advances in ambient intelligence bring ideas for building a new remote collaboration framework that supports the adaptive generation of instructions. In the study, we developed a novel MR remote collaboration prototype system, which can automatically and adaptively generate clear, detailed, and standardized AR instructions based on remote experts’ simple and intuitive interactions and local contextual information to assist remote experts in guiding local workers to complete industrial physical tasks, especially industrial assembly tasks. The effect of two interfaces on industrial assembly tasks involving relatively complex process information and environments was explored in a user study: one was a baseline solution that uses a typical MR remote collaboration interface to support remote experts to create instructions (RECI) using popular non-verbal communication cues in the shared local 3D stereoscopic scene, and the other was our novel interface that additionally supported the adaptive generation of instructions via context awareness (AGICA) on top of the typical interface. The result of the user study showed that AGICA significantly improves collaboration performance, reduces errors and workload, and enhances usability and user experience compared to RECI. This demonstrates that supporting the adaptive generation of instructions is a feasible way to enhance MR remote collaboration in industrial assembly tasks with relatively complex process information and environments. Our research findings have a certain guiding significance for the design of MR remote collaboration systems in such tasks.

Sexual Victimization, Emotion Dysregulation, and Sexual Consent Feelings and Communication During a Recent Sexual Encounter

ABSTRACT Sexual consent has been a major focus of campus campaigns to reduce sexual violence (SV). However, these campaigns often educate students about consent with little attention to the complex ways consent can be experienced, expressed, and interpreted by others. Further, little research has focused on the consent feelings and communication cues of students who have a history of SV, nor have studies examined how the ability to attend to and regulate emotions relates to internal feelings or external communication of consent. This secondary analysis examined SV histories, emotion dysregulation, and internal and external consent cues in a sample of 610 college students (72% women) who completed an online self-report survey. Findings revealed that students with SV histories (n = 257) reported greater emotion dysregulation, lower internal consent, and greater use of passive external consent cues compared to students without SV histories; greater emotion dysregulation was associated with lower internal consent. In a path model, SV history was indirectly related to use of direct nonverbal and passive consent cues through greater emotion dysregulation and lower internal consent. Contrary to expectations, higher internal consent was associated with greater use of passive external consent cues. Consent programming could be augmented to encourage attention to and regulation of emotions in sexual situations to improve communication and sexual well-being.

Communicating in English as a Second Language Aboard a European Cruise Line: An Autoethnographic Sketch

Working aboard an international cruise ship that travels to Europe is an exciting adventure with the many wonderful ports of call to visit, exquisite dining experiences, and a multitude of crew members who come from different countries. Because they have to serve foreign guests, crewmembers speak English frequently. This paper is an autoethnographic sketch of a pianist who works in an international cruise line and befriends a Polish musician who has English language issues such as inability to pronounce correct English words and phrases, excessive use of non-verbal cues in communication, and a generally low English comprehension level, but with an inquisitive spirit to learn the second language, the two communicators manage to foster a mutual understanding. Narratives are drawn from self-reflections, analyzed and interwoven as a self-culture assemblage of cross-cultural communication. Results of the study reveal that interpersonal communication hovers within diverse cultural settings despite certain language impediments, emphasizing that the English language as a second language spoken by both second language speakers tends to eliminate speech anxiety. European crew members mingling with multi-cultural individuals establish good interactive skills while fostering good relationships while they learn practical English in the exercise of their daily duties.

Quantifying the biomimicry gap in biohybrid robot-fish pairs

Biohybrid systems in which robotic lures interact with animals have become compelling tools for probing and identifying the mechanisms underlying collective animal behavior. One key challenge lies in the transfer of social interaction models from simulations to reality, using robotics to validate the modeling hypotheses. This challenge arises in bridging what we term the ‘biomimicry gap’, which is caused by imperfect robotic replicas, communication cues and physics constraints not incorporated in the simulations, that may elicit unrealistic behavioral responses in animals. In this work, we used a biomimetic lure of a rummy-nose tetra fish (Hemigrammus rhodostomus) and a neural network (NN) model for generating biomimetic social interactions. Through experiments with a biohybrid pair comprising a fish and the robotic lure, a pair of real fish, and simulations of pairs of fish, we demonstrate that our biohybrid system generates social interactions mirroring those of genuine fish pairs. Our analyses highlight that: 1) the lure and NN maintain minimal deviation in real-world interactions compared to simulations and fish-only experiments, 2) our NN controls the robot efficiently in real-time, and 3) a comprehensive validation is crucial to bridge the biomimicry gap, ensuring realistic biohybrid systems.

‘It's really hard to be a jerk when you’re sitting on someone's couch’: preferences for discussing science and religion online versus offline

ABSTRACT Science and religion are important topics that people have opportunities to discuss in both online and offline contexts. Why do people prefer one communication mode over the other? Analyzing interviews with 45 adults from across the United States, we look at why people prefer communicating online versus offline about science and religion. Findings show that characteristics unique to either mode of communication (asynchronous communication, detachment, visual and social cues) are key factors in shaping people's preferences. We highlight principal differences in how these factors appear across science and religion. We also find that some people's preference toward online or offline communication depends on the context, such as the focus of the discussion or the relationship with the interlocutor. Understanding people's reasons for choosing to communicate about science and religion online versus offline can support related communities in creating more effective discussion options in the future.

Steady Hand at the Wheel: How Perceived Movement Influences Consumer Responses to Brand Failures

Paratextual communication methods, such as the use of emojis and other visual messaging cues, offer firms a unique opportunity to repair relationships with consumers after brand failures. The current research demonstrates that visual messaging cues associated with lower perceived movement lead to greater brand loyalty relative to more dynamic cues in response to brand failure. Across five studies, we show that lower perceived movement in visual messaging cues leads to more favorable consumer outcomes (e.g., subsequent real choice behavior and brand loyalty intentions). This effect is mediated by brand trust. Furthermore, we examine theoretically and practically relevant boundary conditions. The findings presented offer theoretical contributions to research on visual communication cues in brand recovery contexts. Additionally, the current research provides managerially relevant insights for communication strategies during recovery.

Neuroadaptive Bayesian optimisation to study individual differences in infants’ engagement with social cues

Infants’ motivation to engage with the social world depends on the interplay between individual brain’s characteristics and previous exposure to social cues such as the parent’s smile or eye contact. Different hypotheses about why specific combinations of emotional expressions and gaze direction engage children have been tested with group-level approaches rather than focusing on individual differences in the social brain development. Here, a novel Artificial Intelligence-enhanced brain-imaging approach, Neuroadaptive Bayesian Optimisation (NBO), was applied to infant electro-encephalography (EEG) to understand how selected neural signals encode social cues in individual infants. EEG data from 42 6- to 9-month-old infants looking at images of their parent’s face were analysed in real-time and used by a Bayesian Optimisation algorithm to identify which combination of the parent’s gaze/head direction and emotional expression produces the strongest brain activation in the child. This individualised approach supported the theory that the infant’s brain is maximally engaged by communicative cues with a negative valence (angry faces with direct gaze). Infants attending preferentially to faces with direct gaze had increased positive affectivity and decreased negative affectivity. This work confirmed that infants’ attentional preferences for social cues are heterogeneous and shows the NBO's potential to study diversity in neurodevelopmental trajectories.

Attentional Orienting and Disfluency-Related Memory Boost Are Intact in Adults With Moderate-Severe Traumatic Brain Injury.

Traumatic brain injury (TBI) is associated with a range of cognitive-communicative deficits that interfere with everyday communication and social interaction. Considerable effort has been directed at characterizing the nature and scope of cognitive-communication disorders in TBI, yet the underlying mechanisms of impairment are largely unspecified. The present research examines sensitivity to a common communicative cue, disfluency, and its impact on memory for spoken language in TBI. Fifty-three participants with moderate-severe TBI and 53 noninjured comparison participants listened to a series of sentences, some of which contained disfluencies. A subsequent memory test probed memory for critical words in the sentences. Participants with TBI successfully remembered the spoken words (b = 1.57, p < .0001) at a similar level to noninjured comparison participants. Critically, participants with TBI also exhibited better recognition memory for words preceded by disfluency compared to words from fluent sentences (b = 0.57, p = .02). These findings advance mechanistic accounts of cognitive-communication disorder by revealing that, when isolated for experimental study, individuals with moderate-severe TBI are sensitive to attentional orienting cues in speech and exhibit enhanced recognition of individual words preceded by disfluency. These results suggest that some aspects of cognitive-communication disorders may not emerge from an inability to perceive and use individual communication cues, but rather from disruptions in managing (i.e., attending, weighting, integrating) multiple cognitive, communicative, and social cues in complex and dynamic interactions. This hypothesis warrants further investigation.

Cross-cultural communication across STEM disciplines

Collaboration across cultures in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math (STEM) fields has become increasingly common. This means many STEM professionals in US-based companies now work with professionals from other cultures. In this global context, cross-cultural knowledge is crucial for effective communication. Without this knowledge, there can be misunderstandings and discomfort. Different cultures use different communication styles, which has been studied by the field of communication. The concept of high and context low-context culture is used to discuss the role of contextual cues in communication. High-context cultures rely on implicit language and contextual and situational cues, while low-context cultures use explicit language. Although no culture is strictly high or low context, this concept is important as it helps us understand how our communication style can be influenced by cultural characteristics. There is a growing need to support and encourage students to become interested in pursuing careers in STEM fields. Many STEM programs in the United States have emphasized the importance of collaboration to meet this need. However, effective collaboration requires effective communication, and students often lack opportunities to explore how they can communicate effectively with collaborators from other cultures and countries. To bridge this gap, this article proposes incorporating communication into STEM courses for undergraduate students. The course will include learning opportunities about low and high-context cultures and guest speakers. This article aims to provide insights into how communication content can prepare undergraduate students to become culturally competent STEM professionals.