Effects of video and text support on grounding in multilingual multiparty audio conferencing
Andy Echenique, Naomi Yamashita, Hideaki Kuzuoka, Ari Hautasaari · 2014
With computer-mediated communication (CMC) tools allowing collaborations to span the globe, teams can include multiple collaborators located in different countries. Previous research shows how audio communication supplemented by video conferencing or text transcripts improves conversation grounding between native speakers (NS) and non-native speakers (NNS) in one-on-one multi-lingual collaborations. This research investigates how supplemental cues (video or real-time text transcripts) support NNSs' participation in multiparty audio conferences. We implemented a collaborative grounding task with triad groups of NS and NNS to investigate possible effects. We found that NNSs' task accuracy dropped significantly between video+audio trials. By comparison, NNSs' ability to understand common ground increased over trials in the text transcripts+audio condition. Our results demonstrate the difficulties of common ground establishment for NNS in multiparty collaborations and how the development of supporting tools for multilingual audio conferencing can aid NNSs? communication ability.