Monica A. Riordan

Barriers to critical thinking: workflow interruptions and task switching among nurses.

Nurses are increasingly called upon to engage in critical thinking. However, current workflow inhibits this goal with frequent task switching and unpredictable demands. To assess workflows cognitive impact, nurses were observed at 2 hospitals with different patient loads and acuity levels. Workflow on a medical/surgical and pediatric oncology unit was observed, recording tasks, tools, collaborators, and locations. Nineteen nurses were observed for a total of 85.2 hours. Tasks were short with a mean duration of 62.4 and 81.6 seconds on the 2 units. More than 50% of the recorded tasks were less than 30 seconds in length. An analysis of task sequence revealed few patterns and little pairwise repetition. Performance on specific tasks differed between the 2 units, but the character of the workflow was highly similar. The nonrepetitive flow and high amount of switching indicate nurses experience a heavy cognitive load with little uninterrupted time. This implies that nurses rarely have the conditions necessary for critical thinking.

Cues in computer-mediated communication: A corpus analysis

An analysis of five contemporary corpora examines the use of several different cues in four channels of computer-mediated communication. With an in-depth corpus analysis, we show that a wealth of cues is available in online communication, and that these cues are often matched with words that have particular functions and/or semantic meanings. Using the Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count text analysis software (Pennebaker et al., 2007), we found the two largest categories represented by cue-laden words involved affect and cognitive mechanisms, suggesting that cues are largely used to indicate emotion or to disambiguate a message. We argue that learning the meaning of these cues is central to learning how people communicate nonverbally while online.

Emotion encoding and interpretation in computer-mediated communication: Reasons for use

As computer-mediated communication (CMC) is increasingly used to build and maintain relationships, the examination of channel choice for the development of these social ties becomes important to study. Using free response data from Riordan and Kreuz (submitted for publication), we examine reasons for choosing among face-to-face, asynchronous email, or synchronous instant message channels to transmit negatively or positively valenced emotional information. The most common reason for choosing face-to-face over channels of CMC was the ability to use more nonverbal cues. The most common reason for choosing a CMC channel over face-to-face was to shield oneself from the message recipient. Face-to-face was deemed more effective, more personal, more comfortable, and less permanent than CMC channels. Reasons differed significantly by valence and channel. We suggest that better knowledge of why people choose certain channels for different types of socio-emotional communication can help develop more comprehensive theories of CMC that account for different attributes of each channel in information transmission.

Transforming Nursing Workflow, Part 2: The Impact of Technology on Nurse Activities

Objective: To assess the impact of new technology on nurse workflow, nurses at 2 hospitals were observed before and after implementation of an electronic medication charting system. In part 1 (September 2010 issue), we discussed the chaotic nature of nurse activities and its implications on transforming workflow. Background: Numerous studies have documented the impact of technology on performance and satisfaction, but technologys impact on the frequency, duration, and pattern of activities is less understood. These patterns are important to the development of new care models. Methods: Observers shadowed nurses at 2 hospitals before and after the implementation of an electronic medication charting system. A total of 196 hours of observation was recorded at one site, and 185 hours at the other site. Results: Analysis of variance revealed a number of significant differences in the time spent on a variety of activities, but the duration and frequency of nurse activities were not drastically altered by the additional technology. Conclusions: Computer use increased; however, the impact was evenly distributed among other activities. More importantly, time with patients and verbal communication remained unchanged as nurses seemed to incorporate the new requirements into their normal routine.

Communication Accommodation in Instant Messaging An Examination of Temporal Convergence

Research on communication accommodation theory in online communication has documented convergence primarily in terms of lexical variables. This article presents the results of two studies that investigate convergence in structural variables in instant messaging (IM) conversations. Study 1 examines zero-history, intragroup dyads participating in a task-based IM conversation. Study 2 examines IM conversations between friends and contrasts social and task-based interactions. Results show interlocutors have a general tendency toward convergence on both the length and duration of individual contributions. Results also show differences reflecting relational (friends vs. strangers) and conversational (task vs. social) context that affect levels of convergence as the conversation continues.

Emojis as Tools for Emotion Work: Communicating Affect in Text Messages:

Emojis are pictures commonly used in texting. The use and type of emojis has increased in recent years; particularly emojis that are not faces, but rather objects. While prior work on emojis of faces suggest their primary purpose is to convey affect, few have researched the communicative purpose of emojis of objects. In the current work, two experiments assess whether emojis of objects also convey affect. Different populations of participants are shown text messages with or without different emojis of objects, asked to rate the message’s affective content, and indicate their confidence in their ratings. Overall results suggest that emojis of objects communicate positive affect, specifically joy. These findings are framed in the sociological theory of emotion work, suggesting that the time and effort involved in using emojis may help maintain and enhance social relationships.

Distinguishing Sarcasm From Literal Language: Evidence From Books and Blogging

Sarcasm production and comprehension have been traditionally described in terms of pragmatic factors. Lexical cues have received less attention, but they may be important potential indicators. A major obstacle to examining such features is determining sarcastic intent. One solution is to analyze statements explicitly marked as being sarcastic. This study examined Twitter postings marked with #sarcasm as well as dialog from Google Books containing the phrase “said sarcastically.” We used word counting and part-of-speech tagging to compare specific lexical features of the explicitly-marked sarcastic statements to statements by the same author not marked as sarcastic. Our results broadly support the Lexical Cues Hypothesis—certain word-level cues, such as interjections and positive affect terms, are stereotypic of sarcasm. A model incorporating these features performed comparably to human raters in making sarcastic versus nonsarcastic judgments. This finding shows promise for future work toward automatically identifying sarcasm in text.

Alignment Is a Function of Conversational Dynamics

Two prominent theories of alignment (priming and grounding) are tested in human–human text-only computer interactions. In two experiments, dyads of strangers and dyads of friends conducted conversations using Instant Messenger. These conversations were either neutral in nature or interlocutors were told to disagree on a particular topic. Conversations were assessed for paralinguistic, linguistic, semantic, affective, and typographical alignment. Results show distinct differences in alignment patterns dependent on conversational dynamics. Grounding theory is supported and discussion includes examining how nonverbal cues are translated into text-only conversation.