Mamiko Sakata

The Effects of Group Size in the Furniture Assembly Task

Does the number of additional participants affect the physical performance or the psychological evaluation of participants on carrying out a task? This paper examines the effects of group size, either individuals, two-party or five-party, using the furniture assembly task. We use three behavioral indexes, i.e. degree of completion, time-to-completion, and duration of interaction with materials, in a physical performance evaluation. Furthermore, we use three psychological indexes, i.e., degrees of contribution, satisfaction, and familiarity, in a psychological evaluation. In duration of interaction with materials, time-to-completion, and degree of contribution, the members of two-person groups take longer or feel more individually significant than do the members of five-person groups. These results suggest that social loafing effects have emerged by increasing the number of participants. We expect these findings to help in designing relationality among people as well as between people and artifacts.

Essential Tips for Successful Collaboration – A Case Study of the “Marshmallow Challenge”

We report essential tips for collaboration success obtained through the task of the “Marshmallow Challenge.” This involves examining the relationships among task achievement, performance satisfaction, and verbal/non-verbal behaviors throughout the task. We record and analyze the speech and gaze of participants with a video camera. The height of the marshmallow tower is measured as the metric of task achievement. The performance satisfaction felt by participants is obtained with a post-task questionnaire. We use correlation analysis between task achievement/performance satisfaction and verbal/nonverbal behaviors at three stages of the task: the early, middle and final phases. The results suggest that number of agreement utterances in the early phase contributes to increased height of the marshmallow tower. The distribution of the frequency of eye contact in the early phase seem to affect the performance satisfaction of the participants.

Effects of Group Size on Performance and Member Satisfaction

The effects of group size on performance and member satisfaction were assessed, with group size ranging from an individual to five members. Participants were 96 university students who engaged in a furniture-assembly task. Our results showed that group size had negligible effects on member satisfaction but strong effects on performance characteristics. As group size increased, performance characteristics, time-to-completion, and duration of interaction with materials decreased in an exponential manner, although member satisfaction tended to become saturated. The result for duration of interaction with materials suggested that the social loafing effect increased with the size of the group. We expect these results to be helpful in designing relationality for collaborative problem solving among people as well as between people and artifacts.

A Study on Extracting Attractive Regions from One-Point Perspective Paintings

According to Takashina’s research on art history, Ukiyo-e (Japanese woodblock prints) painters began to use the vanishing point as a mechanism to attract viewer’s point of view. They did this by setting the main motif on the vanishing point. In this study, we attempted to clarify experimentally the effect created by a composition in which a painter draws the main motif on the vanishing point of a one-point perspective. For this purpose, we performed an experiment to measure gaze points in viewing paintings. In the experiment, we presented six paintings: two paintings with main motifs on the vanishing points, two edited paintings in which the main motifs on the vanishing points were deleted, and two paintings with main motifs not at the vanishing points. For each painting, we measured the gaze for 30 s. The number of participants analyzed was 18. We observed that viewers looked more at main motifs on vanishing points than at other regions. The same result was demonstrated even when the main motifs were deleted. We also observed that viewers looked more at the vanishing point than at the main motif, which is not on the vanishing point. This suggests that viewers enjoy the main motif by seeing it within peripheral visual field. In addition, viewers looked more at the vanishing point than at other regions even when there was no main motif originally. These results demonstrate the powerful effect of vanishing points.

Creativity Comes from Interaction

We explored how three people communicate verbally (i.e. chatting, discussion) and nonverbally (i.e. gazes, gestures) in creating a Lego(R) castle collaboratively. We also investigated how such communication behaviors can be cues for a “better” and “more creative” castle. In Experiment 1, we asked a total of 30 students (3 people (times ) 10 groups) to construct a castle fully in collaboration with the group members. In Experiment 2, we asked the other 27 students to assess the quality (“how good the castle is”) and creativeness (“how creative the castle is”) for the photographed castles. The verbal, gestural, and gazing behaviors of the creators were analyzed quantitatively. We conducted path analyses to identify parameters determining the quality and the creativeness, showing that the degree of communication behaviors was reflected in the evaluation of the created castle. In detail, the quality was enhanced by looking at the other group members as well as by discussing the content of the castle. The creativeness was determined by the degree of chatting and representational gestures. These results suggest the communication process in multiple-agent creation: Rapport can be constructed efficiently by chatting with the other members; creators can share divergent ideas; and they can construct a creative object.

Exploring Dance Teaching Anxiety in Japanese Schoolteachers

The purpose of the present study is to understand Japanese schoolteacher anxiety when teaching dance and how such anxiety differs according to the teachers’ individual characteristics. We focused on “teaching anxiety,” which we defined as teachers’ concerns regarding physical education curricula. We conducted a questionnaire survey of teachers from randomly selected public junior high schools (N = 143). Our text-mining analysis showed that teaching anxiety is classified into five groups: anxiety over teaching methods, his/her own dance skills, lack of knowledge, student interest, and general teaching. Multiple correspondence analysis showed that teaching anxiety differed according to age, sex, dance experience, and dance teaching experience.

How Do Japanese People Return a Greeting with a Bow

The greeting is one of the most familiar communicative behaviors in everyday life. In this study, we clarified the features of spontaneous greeting interactions by focusing on the timing of bows and utterances. In particular, we focused on how the response changes with the timing of the greeting. In the experiment, we performed simulated interviews and analyzed spontaneous greetings before and after the interview. Our experiment showed that the responses did not change with the interviewer’s bows and utterances. It also revealed that there was a routine response pattern, appropriate for the people (i.e., greeters) involved.

Exploring How People Collaborate with a Stranger

We explored human-to-human communication when two people collaboratively attempt to reproduce an abstract painting. We examined the effects of friendship (i.e., stranger versus friend) and the task’s three phases (i.e., first, second, versus third) on verbal and nonverbal behaviors. In our experiment, pairs of strangers ((n=24), 12 pairs) and friends ((n=24), 12 pairs) reproduced three abstract paintings. We measured the duration of their conversations, gestures, and painting behaviors, and the behaviors were labeled based on Traum (1994). The results showed that the amount and the functions of painting differed as a function of friendship. Since friends seemed more likely to focus on the efficient completion of the task, painting functions as a means of communicating images to partners. On the other hand, since strangers attempt to minimize conflicts with their partners, they start painting after discussing what to paint next.

Verbal and Nonverbal Skills in Open Communication: Comparing Experienced and Inexperienced Radio Duos

This paper examines how the difference in talk skill for open communication affects the orientation of the verbal and nonverbal behaviors of the talk partner or audience. An experiment was carried out using multiple radio duos having different levels of talk skill, i.e., experienced and inexperienced. The experiment’s task was conducted in a pseudo-radio setting under three conditions: audience-present talk, audience-absent talk, and audience-absent/post-talk sessions. The speech and body gestures of all participants were video-recorded and analyzed. The results suggest that the different levels of experience in radio talk are expressed in different speech and gesture orientations. These findings seem applicable to the speech- and gesture-expression model for conversational robots, especially for nursing-care robots designed to talk with other robots or cohabitants.

Analyzing Structure of Multiparty Interaction: Group Size Effect in Story-Retelling Task

This paper examines the differences in verbal and nonverbal behaviors between different group sizes, specifically two-party and three-party interactions. An experiment was conducted using a story-retelling task. The interaction data were recorded with a video camera. Speech, gaze, and gesture data in both group sizes were analyzed. The results suggest that participants in three-party interaction change speakers more frequently by turning their gaze to each other than do those in two-party interaction.