Awareness
Definition:
When dealing with telecommunications environments new obstacles must be
overcome. Traditional face-to-face communication is enormously complex
and involves many factors that are just now being discovered. These
factors include but are not limited to vocal inflection, hand gestures,
facial expressions, body posture, interruption. These factors combine
to produce awareness of the social situation. By observing these
cues a speaker can get a feel of how the listener is comprehending the
material, what aspects of the material are interesting or boring to the
listener, as well as many other subtle cues. Through many telecommunication
medium, text relay chat tools, web-phone tools, these factors cannot be
communicated. This leads to a general sense of dissatisfaction with
the conversation and can lead to statements like, "Are you there?" and
"Are you listening to me?"
These questions interupt the communication flow and can greatly hamper
the productivity of the conversation. In a recently published article,
televised on CNN Nov. 30, 1998, a study was done in which one group of
participants had to sit on their hands during conversations. This
was to prevent the use of hand gestures. The study found a profound
loss of memory about the conversation both in the short and long term,
as well anxiety during the conversation. The study did not conclude
what the specific cause of the lack of retention was due to, but awareness
issues may be involved.