In our lead up to #ICA25, we are providing information about papers that received Top Paper awards from the Communication Science and Biology (CSaB) Interest Group. Each paper received exceptionally high scores from reviewers. These papers reflect outstanding scholarship in CSaB. Today’s Top Paper features Lim, Schmälzle, and Bente’s paper: “Communicating across the virtual stage: A bio-behavioral analysis of public speaking dynamics with supportive and unsupportive audiences”. Be sure to check out the paper at #ICA25
CSaB: In a few short sentences, what is your study about?
This study examined how speakers perceive and respond to their audiences. Specifically, participants delivered scientific presentations to supportive and unsupportive virtual audiences in immersive virtual reality (VR). We collected physiological (heart rate, EEG, breathing rate), behavioral (eye contact, speech patterns, basic motion), and self-reported measures to test audience effects. We anchor our results in the theoretical context of public speaking frameworks, broader theories of social-evaluative threat, and discuss the potential of this line of work to develop effective interventions to train and augment human social intelligence and communication.
CSaB: How did you come up with the idea for this line of research?
Whenever we attended conferences and speaker events, we observed that audiences often get bored and become unengaged. However, some speakers do successfully engage audiences. These observations sparked our interest in how the speaker, content, and audience characteristics interact to influence outcomes.
CSaB: Tell us more about the team!
Ralf Schmälzle: Expert of methods involving intersubject correlation and physiological measures
Gary Bente: Expert of nonverbal communication and virtual reality (VR)
Sue Lim: Expert of extended reality (XR) and human-AI interaction