Running head: DYADIC CONVERSATION ON COGNITVE THINKING

The Effects of Dyadic Conversation on Cognitive Thinking

Colin J. C. Lippert
Queens University of Charlotte

Author note
Colin Lippert, Department of Psychology, Queens University of
Charlotte
This research corresponded with PSY 306A 001,002 and Clark C. at
Queens University of Charlotte

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Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Colin
Lippert, Department of Psychology, Queens University of Charlotte,
Charlotte, NC 28274.
E-mail: colin.lippert@queens.edu
Abstract
The purpose of this research is to study the effect of social interactions
on cognitive processing. Two conditions will be compared, computer
mediated and face-to-face interactions. I hypothesize that people will
score higher on the cognitive test in the face-to-face interaction
condition. I also hypothesize that women will score higher on the
cognitive test in relation to men in the face-to-face condition. The
purpose of this study is to expand on previous findings in regard to the
differences that can occur through the various methods of social
interaction.
Keywords: dyadic interaction, social interaction, face-to-face,
cognitive, communication

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The Effects of Dyadic Conversation on Cognitive Thinking

Social interaction is an important part of everyday life. The
medium for social interaction is changing as science moves forward.
Technology advancement has led to a growing concern about the
different characteristics of an online interaction compared to face-toface (Yen, 2012). This is a fair proposition given that our species has
been using in-person communication as our main vehicle of interaction
up until this last century. We have progressed to a point where we are
changing our basic method of communication. Kujath (2011) suggests
that people are substituting Facebook and Myspace communication for
face-to-face communication. Instead of meeting in person with friends
and close relatives, people are maintaining relationships via computermediated communication.

Social

interactions hold many important variables; previous research has

found trust to be a significant variable in social interaction.
Summerville & Chartier, (2013) implemented pseudo-human
interactions with their participants in order to test the effect of trust as
a variable of decision-making. Participants were set up with one of two
conditions. In one condition participants were talking to a computer
and in the other condition participants were talking to a pseudo-human
(a computer generated response pretending to be a real human). Both
conditions were over computer-mediated devices in order to portray
one of the computers as a human. The deception was necessary in

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order to investigate the attitudes (trust) people have towards
computers when making decisions. They found that people anchored
decisions based more on what a human (pseudo-human) told them;
compared to information they received from a computer-generated
response. This study suggests that people are more inclined to trust
people than computers, despite the advantage of efficiency computers
hold over humans. The transition from computer mediated to face-toface interactions adds multiple variables. Summerville & Chartier
(2013) does not involve an actual human only the perception of one,
although the participants for the most part believed it was a human. In
a face-to-face interaction there is no deception possible of a pseudo
human. That means people have to weigh their trust on different
components rather than if the interaction is with a human or nonhuman.
In a study about the impact of social interactions, Schetzsle and
Delpechitres (2014) found a sales person will be more willing to
cooperate with their manager if they can trust them. They suggest that
more informal and formal social interactions will result in employees
having a positive effect on willingness to cooperate with their
supervisor. Previous research has shown that to get better results out
of their employees, employers have to create an environment of social
interaction and communication. Previous research also indicated that

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positive social interactions in a work environment actually promote
better problem solving, knowledge attainment and trustworthiness.
Multiple studies show the positive effects of in-person social
interaction. That leads to the question are all social interactions
positive, if not what components make up a quality interaction.
Downie, Mageau, and Koestner (2008) looked into the specific
components that generate quality interactions. They hypothesized that
interaction with high levels of participant relatedness, autonomy, and
competence would increase quality of the interaction. The study
involved the participants to fill out questionnaires after every
interaction that lasted more than 10 minutes. This went on for a week
and then they brought the questionnaires in to be analyzed. They
found that people found interactions with relatedness, autonomy and
competence more pleasant. The interaction was of higher quality when
it was with close friends and family, rather than co-workers. They also
found that participants who were seeking an interaction with high
relatedness and autonomy prefer dyadic interactions. Out of the three
components they were testing for, relatedness and autonomy, are the
two most directly associated with trust. In accordance with
Summerville & Chartier (2013), they displayed trust is an important
variable for the interaction. Hence the occurrence of group
conversation lacking feelings of relatedness and autonomy, as
interactions with a non-human may produce the same outcome.

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A variable that may negatively effect in-person interaction is
social interaction anxiety, more specifically self-focused attention
(Holzman, Valentiner, and McCraw, 2014). This is a component that
computer-mediated communication can for the most part avoid.
Participants will be more likely to get anxious in face-to-face
interactions than computer-mediated interactions. Therefore if any of
the participants, for my study, are randomly sampled to the face-toface condition and hold this trait, the results can be confounded.
From a biological viewpoint Redcay et al. (2010) researched the
neurological effects of social interaction. They conducted an
experiment that involved the participants to be set up inside an MRI
scanner. From there video screens would be synchronized for both the
participant and the researcher to simulate social interactions. An
important variable they were looking for was joint attention or triadic
attention, this is an identity that holds a platform for 2 or more people
to communicate and coordinate their intentions, beliefs, emotions and
knowledge toward or about a third party. They found that when in live
conversation with the experimenter compared to a video recording,
participants showed increased activity in neural regions that have a
high appliance to everyday in person social interactions. This suggests
that the mere interpretation of an in person social interaction, for
instance, a recording of an interaction, cannot stimulate the same
parts of the brain as contingent demanded social interactions.

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Furthermore this does not separate the difference between computermediated and face-to-face interactions, since both can provide an
avenue for contingency. However as apparent in Summerville &
Chartier (2013) humans cannot always differentiate between human
and non-human computer-mediated interactions, which suggest that
face-to-face interactions hold substantially more cognitive functioning
because the experience of a human interaction is evident and
stimulating.
Previous research has helped identify the strengths of in-person
communication and the weaknesses of computer-mediated, though the
amount of research comparing the two medians are not as lush. For my
study participants will be randomly assigned to one of two conditions.
The first condition will be a 5-minute face-to-face conversation about 3
pre-selected topics. The second condition will be the same procedure
except these participants will have the conversation over a computermediated source in a separate room from the person they are
messaging. After the conversation the participants will complete a
cognitive test in order to test the effects of dyadic conversation
through the different medians.
I hypothesize that people will score higher on the cognitive test
in the face-to-face condition than in the computer-mediated
communication condition. Summerville and Chartier (2013) found that
healthy social interaction promotes brain function; participants who are

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talking in the face-to-face condition should receive more from the
interaction than those in the computer-mediated condition. The
components of a high quality interaction will be much easier to meet
when face-to-face; . Trust is a large part of a healthy social interaction,
participants will be asked to rate the level of trust they feel on a likerttype scale.
I hypothesize participants who rate higher on the trust scale will
score higher on the cognitive test. Schetzle and Delpechtire (2014)
found their participants were more inclined to trust over computermediated interaction vehicles if their counterpart was human apposed
to a computer-generated response. The participants will not have a
visual of their counterpart in the computer-mediated condition, in
contrast to the face-to-face condition where relatedness and autonomy
is higher (Downie et al., 2008). My Third hypothesis is that women will
score higher on the cognitive test in the face-to-face interaction
condition. Women integrate face-to-face interactions into their lifestyle
much more and at a younger age than men do (Thomas, 1997) which
can lead to obtaining the benefits of social interaction on a more
consistent rate.

Method

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Participants
This study will require 40 participants, 20 participants for each
condition (In-person interaction and online interaction). Participants will
be drawn from the Queens University of Charlottes psychology
department participant pool. I am looking for a diverse makeup of
participants, within the limits of the participant pool. Race and age
does not matter. I will need an even number of men and women
because that is one of my independent variables. Demographic data
will be collected in order to check if any confounds are due to
unbalanced internal variables.
Materials
For my dependent variable I am using a cognitive test measuring
the ability to follow complex directions (Ekstrom, French, Harman, &
Kermen, 1976). Finding the right cognitive test was important to my
study to accurately display the positive effects of dyadic interactions.
Following complex directions allows the participant to experience a
sense of problem solving; this is the form of high order thinking that I
think will be most affected. The participant is given a matrix of letters
to refer to, their job is to follow the complex directions and circle the
correct letter for each direction. The participants score consists of the
amount of questions they answered correctly, subtracted by .25 for all
the questions answered incorrectly. For my trust measure I developed
my own question asking the participant how well they feel they can

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trust the confederate after having the conversation ranging from
1(low) to 5(high). To measure the quality of the social interaction I will
ask the participants to rate the interaction on a 7-point Likert-type
scale ranging from 1(unpleasant) to 7(very pleasant) (Reis &wheeler,
1991). The topics of conversation were pre-tested in my research
methods classroom at Queens University of Charlotte. There are a total
of 3 topics and when the conversation breaks between the confederate
and the participant, the confederate will start the next topic. The order
written on the cards that each of them will hold is 1. Where you grew
up, 2. Dream vacation, 3. Things done in free time.
Procedure
The participant will enter the room where only the confederate
and I are present. The confederate will initiate the conversation with
the information given on the cards. The researcher will begin timing
once the participant first speaks. The conversation will go on for 5
minutes; then the researcher will end the conversation. Next the
participant will fill out the cognitive test (Reis &wheeler, 1991).
Followed by a sheet with combined demographic information and
questionnaire, the social interaction and trust questions will also be on
this sheet. The second condition will be done in the same room but this
time the confederate will be in another room so they cannot see each
other. Once they sit down the researcher will explain that they are to
have a conversation through the computer messenger, and the timer

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will be started when they first respond. The conversation will go on for
10 minutes, then I will tell them to close the window. Then hand them
the cognitive test followed by the demographic/questionnaire sheet.
The messenger system I am using is through Gmail. It is an app called
hangouts which allows you to have typed conversations with other
Gmail accounts. In order to do this I created three Gmail accounts one
for girls, boys and the confederate.
Controls
In order to protect against confederate confounds, there will be
one confederate who is a male. In order to control for the confederates
part in the interaction, the gender had to be constant across all
participants. This also means that females will be talking to a different
gender, where as males will be talking to the same gender. I will
attempt to control for this by training my confederate to speak in nongender specific manner. I held one 15-minute session where the
confederate and I went over language that would be considered
gender specific for the topics of conversation pre-tested. All
conversations will have the same three topics therefor the speaker
should not differentiate when talking to a male or a female participant.
Proposed Analysis
I will be using a T-Test to compare the averages between face-toface and computer mediated conditions cognitive test scores. I will also
be using the T-Test to find differences between men and women on the

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cognitive test, specifically the face-to-face condition. Finally the T-Test
will be used to allocate the differences on the cognitive scores between
participants who rated high on the trust measure compared to
participants who rated low on trust.

References
Downie, M., Mageau, G. A., & Koestner, R. (2008). What makes for a
pleasant social interaction? Motivational dynamics of
interpersonal relations. The Journal of Social Psychology, 148,
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Ekstrom, R. B., French, J. W., Harman, H.
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cognitive tests. Princeton, NJ: Educational Testing Service.
Holzman, J. B., B.A., Valentiner, D. P., PhD., & McCraw, K. S., M.A.
(2014). Self-focused attention and post-event processing:
Relevance to social performance anxiety and social interaction
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Kujath, C. L. (2011) Facebook and MySpace: Complement or substitute
for face-to-face interaction? Cyberpsychology, Behavior, and
Social Networking, 14, 75-78. doi:10.1089/cyber.2009.0311.

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Redcay, E., Dodell-Feder, D., Pearrow, M. J., Mavros, P. L., Kleiner, M.,
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