Formal Social Interaction Research Articles

When artificial intelligence substitutes humans in higher education: the cost of loneliness, student success, and retention

ABSTRACT Artificial intelligence (AI) may be the new-new-norm in a post-pandemic learning environment. There is a growing number of university students using AI like ChatGPT and Bard to support their academic experience. Much of the AI in higher education research to date has focused on academic integrity and matters of authorship; yet, there may be unintended consequences beyond these concerns for students. That is, there may be people who reduce their formal social interactions while using these tools. This study evaluates 387 university students and their relationship to – and with – artificial intelligence large-language model-based tools. Using structural equation modelling, the study finds evidence that while AI chatbots designed for information provision may be associated with student performance, when social support, psychological wellbeing, loneliness, and sense of belonging are considered it has a net negative effect on achievement. This study tests an AI-specific form of social support, and the cost it may pose to student success, wellbeing, and retention. Indeed, while AI chatbot usage may be associated with poorer social outcomes, human-substitution activity that may be occurring when a student chooses to seek support from an AI rather than a human (e.g. a librarian, professor, or student advisor) may pose interesting learning and teaching policy implications. We explore the implications of this from the lens of student success and belonging.

Review of 9 Ways to Make Housing for People

Between 2020 and 2022, 1.2 million apartment units were built in the United States, and housing remains a key development sector. Yet few recent resources exist to support the design of multifamily housing, most notably for the essential common areas that provide opportunities for both casual and formal social interaction between residents. Drawing on three decades of experience designing more than 15,000 sustainable dwellings, David Baker Architects (DBA) turns our attention to social sustainability, imparting lessons bolstered by examples from their deep portfolio. The central argument in 9 Ways to Make Housing for People is that human dignity is at the center of design. The book presents conceptual housing principles, based on the tenets of social sustainability, applicable across programs and sites.

Living well in your local neighbourhood: The value of bumping and gathering places

Cities need places that contribute to quality of life, places that support social interaction. Wellbeing, specifically, community wellbeing, is influenced by where people live, the quality of place is important and who they connect with socially. Social interaction and connection can come from the routine involvement with others, the behavioural acts of seeing and being with others. This research consisted of 38 interviews of residents of Christchurch, New Zealand, in the years following the 2010-12 earthquakes. Residents were asked about the place they lived and their interactions within their community. The aim was to examine the role of neighbourhood in contributing to local social connections and networks that contribute to living well. Specifically, it focused on the role and importance of social infrastructure in facilitating less formal social interactions in local neighbourhoods. It found that neighbourhood gathering places and bumping spaces can provide benefit for living well. Social infrastructure, like libraries, parks, primary schools, and pubs are some of the places of neighbourhood that contributed to how well people can encounter others for social interaction. In addition, unplanned interactions were facilitated by the existence of bumping places, such as street furniture. The wellbeing value of such spaces needs to be acknowledged and factored into planning decisions, and local rules and regulations need to allow the development of such spaces.

Interviewing autistic adults: Adaptations to support recall in police, employment, and healthcare interviews.

Recalling specific past experiences is critical for most formal social interactions, including when being interviewed for employment, as a witness or defendant in the criminal justice system, or as a patient during a clinical consultation. Such interviews can be difficult for autistic adults under standard open questioning, yet applied research into effective methods to facilitate autistic adults’ recall is only recently beginning to emerge. The current study tested the efficacy of different prompting techniques to support autistic adults’ recall of specific personal memories; 30 autistic and 30 typically developing adults (intelligence quotients > 85) were asked to recall specific instances from their past, relevant to criminal justice system, healthcare, and employment interviews. Questions comprised ‘open questions’, ‘semantic prompting’ (where semantic knowledge was used to prompt specific episodic retrieval) and ‘visual–verbal prompting’ (a pie-diagram with prompts to recall specific details, for example, who, what, and where). Half the participants received the questions in advance. Consistent with previous research, autistic participants reported memories with reduced specificity. For both groups, visual–verbal prompting support improved specificity and episodic relevance, while semantic prompting also aided recall for employment questions (but not health or criminal justice system). Findings offer new practical insight for interviewers to facilitate communication with typically developing and autistic adults.Lay abstractDuring many types of interviews (e.g. in employment, with the police, and in healthcare), we need to recall detailed memories of specific events, which can be difficult for autistic people in response to commonly used questions. This is especially because these tend to be open questions (i.e. very broad). Autistic people have disproportionately high rates of physical and mental health conditions, are more likely to interact with police, and are the most underemployed disability group. However, interviewers are often unsure about how to adapt their communication for autistic people.Our research tested whether different types of prompts enabled autistic people to recall specific memories (memories of a single event within one day). Participants were asked about situations relating to witnessing a crime (e.g. at the bank), physical or mental health scenarios and employment interviews (e.g. a time you’ve met a deadline).We tested the following:Open questions: basic questions only (e.g. ‘tell me about a time you went to the cinema’),Semantic prompting: a general prompt (e.g. ‘do you enjoy going to the cinema?’) before asking for a specific instance (‘tell me about a time you went to the cinema?’),Visual–verbal prompting: asking participants to recall when it happened, who was there, the actions that occurred, the setting, and any objects.With visual–verbal prompting, autistic and typically developing participants’ memories were more specific and detailed. Semantic prompting was also effective for employment questions. Our study shows that autistic people can recall specific memories when they are appropriately prompted. Visual–verbal prompting may be effective across different situations.

Social Amplification of Wildfire Risk: The Role of Social Interactions and Information Sources

Wildfire is a persistent and growing threat across much of the western United States. Understanding how people living in fire-prone areas perceive this threat is essential to the design of effective risk management policies. Drawing on the social amplification of risk framework, we develop a conceptual model of wildfire risk perceptions that incorporates the social processes that likely shape how individuals in fire-prone areas come to understand this risk, highlighting the role of information sources and social interactions. We classify information sources as expert or nonexpert, and group social interactions according to two dimensions: formal versus informal, and generic versus fire-specific. Using survey data from two Colorado counties, we empirically examine how information sources and social interactions relate to the perceived probability and perceived consequences of a wildfire. Our results suggest that social amplification processes play a role in shaping how individuals in this area perceive wildfire risk. A key finding is that both "vertical" (i.e., expert information sources and formal social interactions) and "horizontal" (i.e., nonexpert information and informal interactions) interactions are associated with perceived risk of experiencing a wildfire. We also find evidence of perceived "risk interdependency"--that is, homeowners' perceptions of risk are higher when vegetation on neighboring properties is perceived to be dense. Incorporating social amplification processes into community-based wildfire education programs and evaluating these programs' effectiveness constitutes an area for future inquiry.

Social interaction and children's academic test scores: Evidence from the National Child Development Study

We explore the relationship between educational attainment and social interaction using individual level data from the British National Child Development Study. To be specific, we analyze whether an intergenerational aspect to this relationship exists by examining the relationship between the educational attainment of children and the degree of formal social activity undertaken by their parents. Our results suggest that children's scores in reading, mathematics and vocabulary tests are positively associated with the extent of their parents’ formal social interaction, and this relationship is robust to alternative definitions of social interaction.

25th volume celebration paper Age-identities and the celebration of birthdays

In a paper in the January issue of this volume of Ageing & Society, Eric Midwinter argued that ‘much can be learned from re-drawing the demographic map with social rather than chronological contours’. This opinion reflects a widespread view among social gerontologists that chronological age is an ‘empty’ variable, even though it is central to the construction of social identities, both in bureaucratic contexts and in less formal social interaction. This paper draws on material stored in the Mass-Observation Archive at the University of Sussex, England. A large panel of ‘ordinary people’ was asked to write about ‘growing older’ in 1992 and about ‘birthdays’ in 2002. An analysis of the ways in which they revealed their age demonstrates that the revelation of chronological age is unproblematic in certain contexts that are deemed appropriate. Difficulties arise as a result of the association of age with various more nebulous statuses such as ‘middle-aged’ and ‘old’. The implications for the concept of ‘the third age’ are discussed and it is concluded that social gerontology should pay more attention to the theoretical significance of chronological age and age-identity and less to age statuses.

Empirical applications of structuration theory

This study reviews and classifies fifty‐three potential empirical applications of structuration theory in geography and the social sciences. These were retrieved using a computerized keyword search of articles and books published in the English language between 1982 and 2000. The five dimensions for classifying these studies were (1) a representable type of social behaviour, (2) a methodological bracketing, (3) using specific data, (4) a treatment of time‐space, and (5) an interpretation of a duality of structure. Thirteen studies were classified as the most productive applications of structuration theory because they either tested or illustrated a duality of structure. On the one hand, the substantive areas of these were more diverse than originally envisioned. On the other hand, they were interpretations of the ongoing relatively formal social interactions between individuals in modern communities, families and organizations, and this confirms the theory's more circumscribed ontological scope as implied by the critics.