2.3.
Human-Human-Interaction
The usual way humans interact with each other is face-to-face and by language.
In such a communication at least two humans exchange meaning verbally. But
words and sentences are not the sole part of the communication. Potentially
humans can communicate with all five senses: sight, sound, touch, taste and
smell. Using these channels, many other cues, verbal and non-verbal, are incorporated
when transferring meaning. The sender employs these cues subconsciously and
the receiver understands it in the same fashion - subconsciously. A vital
feature is that our everyday interaction with each other and the world around
us is a multi-sensory one, each sense providing different information that
builds up the whole.
Let's have a closer look on human-human communication. A key issue in interaction
is language. It is not a one-channel but always a two-channel process. The
sender utters some words complemented by gaze, The receiver gives back some
kind of acknowledgement to the sender, poses questions or takes turn, i.e.
there is feed-back channel (see Figure 4).
Figure 4: The sender-receiver model of human
communication
The fluency, prosody and intonation
of the sentences and words tell us important things about the speaker, e.g.
about his inner state, about the circumstances he is speaking of or to give
or emphasise a certain meaning. A closer look on language in dialogs brings
up five main human abilities to successfully participate in conversation (CMT3210).
1.
An important aspect of communication is the human's ability to recognise
openings and closings of topics during a conversation. It guaranties that
both persons keep track on each others contexts to advance the dialog or avoid
misunderstandings.
A: Do you want another
pint? opening
B: what's the time? opening
A: ten to ten closing
B: OK, yes thanks closing
2.
If a misunderstanding should occur, a second 'basic' technique jumps in:
repair actions. Using questions or non-verbal cues they try to clarify the
questionable fact or the context it is embedded in.
3.
Humans exhibit context sensitivity when interacting with each others. They
can understand the meaning of the words in a certain context, be it the actual
situation the fact is told or a certain (fictitious) setting, e.g. the last
holiday.
4.
To keep the conversation
going, humans use short sequences of feed-back cues and turn-taking signals.
First show to the speaker that the listener is following the speaker's pace
of thoughts, e.g. a nod or mumbling 'Hmmm'. Latter signals to the listener
that he might take turn and begin to speak, e.g. a pause and looking into
the eyes.
5.
If the communication
situation provides more than two people, it can happen that the original speaker
hands over 'his' conversation with the second human to a third one, who takes
up the talk. This concept incorporates adjacent pairs of action and response.
A: who is speaking? action
B: it’s Bob Fields response
C: is he going to the US? action
D: well, I heard that
….
response
The relationship and interplay
between these abilities make it happen that humans understand such concepts
like humour, sarcasm and irony. Humans can detect if there is a mismatch between
the literal word, it's meaning (semantics) and what the speaker wants to tell
(pragmatics). In humour, sarcasm and irony the pure words never transport
the true meaning, but intonation, pauses and prosody may hint on the speaker's
intention. They listener has to have some background knowledge fitting the
speaker's one to decode the message. Otherwise misunderstandings are likely.
Aside from the language centred
cues there are multiple sources of sensory information, the so called non-verbal
cues. These cues could support or complement the verbal utterances, e.g. pointing
somewhere and saying 'there!'. It includes gestures like hand movements, head
and eye movements as well as body movement and body orientation. Non-verbal
cues can be expressions on their own, i.e. the body language. Turning your
back on someone and crossing the arms in front of your chest will tell anyone that you don't
want to interact with this person even if you don't say a word. On the other
hand, when someone identifies a known person, the typical reaction is tracking
with the eyes and a body orientation towards the person in question. That
will be understood as a sign of openness and the disposition to start a conversation.
Non-verbal cues play an important role for both, the speaker and the listener.
For the speaker they are necessary means to accentuate his story. They support
the listener to understand what the speakers wants to tell. Without non-verbal
cues the conversation would be 'stiff' and quite unnatural.
An
important aspect is the context of the conversation are the emotional states
of the participants. They play a key role to truly understand what each one
wants to tell. Thus the ability to recognise, interpret and express emotions
- commonly referred to as "emotional
intelligence" (Goleman, 1995) - plays a key role in human communication.
Related is empathy, another typical property of human-human interaction. It
means that someone shows understanding of the other's situation and is feeling
with the individual, e.g. after a friend has suffered from a great loss one
could express his sympathy by simply hugging him.
[CG1]
Without showing some kind of empathy the human-human conversation is cold
and distant, solely consisting of facts - not any social. This is how we have
to interact with computers today. To see how we could bring social factors
into this interaction, let us have a closer look on the status quo of Human-Computer
Interaction in the next chapter.