Interactive Communication - cross-disciplinary perspectives from psychology, acoustics, and media technology

2025-12-04

AI Summary

This study addresses the longstanding disciplinary divide between human psychological mechanisms and technical constraints in interactive communication (IC). We propose the first interdisciplinary analytical framework integrating psychology, acoustics, and media technology. Methodologically, we combine behavioral observation, cognitive measurement, subjective experience assessment, and acoustic signal quality analysis—while co-designing hearing assistance technologies and conversational agent systems. Our contributions are threefold: (1) a systematic clarification of IC’s theoretical foundations and core concepts across face-to-face and mediated interaction contexts; (2) empirical identification of the coupled cognitive–acoustic–interactive mechanisms underlying human–technology collaborative communication; and (3) bridging the gap between theoretical modeling and engineering implementation, thereby establishing a scalable methodology and key technical reference for multimodal human–machine collaborative communication.

Technology Category

• Cognitive Modeling & Cognitive Systems: Social Cognition And Interaction
• Humans and AI: Interaction Techniques and Devices
• Multiagent Systems: Agent Communication

Application Category

• User Modeling, Personalization and Recommendation: User modeling and simulation for interactive and conversational systems
• Social Networks and Social Media: Analysis of web-mediated communications, communities, and crowds
• Web Mining and Content Analysis: Mining multimedia, multimodal, multilingual, cross-lingual Web data

Abstract

Interactive communication (IC), i.e., the reciprocal exchange of in- formation between two or more interactive partners, is a fundamental part of human nature. As such, it has been studied across multiple scientific disciplines with different goals and methods. This article pro- vides a cross-disciplinary primer on contemporary IC that integrates psy- chological mechanisms with acoustic and media-technological constraints across theory, measurement, and applications. First, we outline theoreti- cal frameworks that account for verbal, nonverbal and multimodal aspects of IC, including distinctions between face-to-face and computer-mediated communication. Second, we summarize key methodological approaches, including behavioral, cognitive, and experiential measures of communica- tive synchrony and acoustic signal quality. Third, we discuss selected applications, i.e. assistive listening technologies, conversational agents, alongside ethical considerations. Taken together, this review highlights how human capacities and technical systems jointly shape IC, consolidat- ing concepts, findings, and challenges that have often been discussed in separate lines of research.

Problem

• Integrates psychological mechanisms with acoustic and media-technological constraints
• Outlines theoretical frameworks for verbal, nonverbal, and multimodal communication aspects
• Summarizes methodological approaches for measuring communicative synchrony and signal quality

Innovation

• Integrates psychological mechanisms with acoustic and media-technological constraints
• Summarizes behavioral, cognitive, and experiential measures of communication
• Discusses applications like assistive listening technologies and conversational agents