Communication between two individuals is not as effective if it is done by interposed technology, found a Montreal researcher, and it could even require a greater effort of concentration from the brain.
This could explain the “Zoom fatigue”, this discomfort that many have felt during the pandemic after an entire day spent online chatting with colleagues.
“Our findings clearly illustrate the price we pay for the technology,” the authors write in the medical journal NeuroImage.
Guillaume Dumas, a researcher from the University of Montreal and the CHU Sainte-Justine, and his colleagues used an electroencephalogram to examine the brains of mothers and their teenagers who were talking in person, then by interposed technology. The examination showed that the participants’ brains did not react in the same way at all.
The researchers found that the participants’ brains “synchronized” when they were in each other’s presence, which did not happen when they were chatting through a screen. More specifically, they were able to measure that nine important links united the two brains during the in-person conversation, compared to only one during the virtual conversation.
It is believed that these bonds could allow the interlocutors to communicate their emotional state or non-verbal cues to their partner.
“It’s the old adage to be on the same wavelength,” said Dumas, who discussed his work firsthand with The Canadian Press. And in this study, we show that precisely, we are less on the same wavelength when we are by videoconference, than when we are face to face. As a result, we pay a little the price of using technology to communicate by having a communication that is perhaps of lower quality and less authentic compared to what our brain is used to, to what it was made for. »
Our brains are the result of tens of thousands of years of evolution, he recalled. Compared to the evolution of technology, the biological evolution of our brain is relatively slow, and so we still have relatively the same brain as our Homo sapiens ancestors 10,000 or 20,000 thousand years ago.
Consequently, he continues, our brain is configured to manage interactions and communications with others in real time, face to face.
The researchers found that the frontal region of the mother’s brain linked to each of the regions measured in the child’s brain. The frontal cortex is associated with higher social functions, including social cognition and decision-making in a social context.
In-person communication, Dumas said, makes it easier to convey and pick up “non-verbal cues, perhaps anticipating what the other is going to say, understanding innuendo or things that are more subtle in terms of communication”, which is much more difficult in the presence of a two-dimensional image.
“We will have to force a little more from an attentional point of view, said Mr. Dumas. It’s much more complicated to maintain communication, a bit like talking on the phone and there’s a lot of noise around. We feel that it’s not pleasant, that we have to put a lot more energy, a lot more effort to manage to communicate with the other person. »
Several factors have been cited to explain “Zoom fatigue”, including delayed social feedback, difficulty maintaining attention, people not showing their faces, posture problems, or responses that are slow in coming due to microphones turned off.
This new study adds reduced brain synchronization to that list.
“We may end up concluding that a 15-minute in-person meeting is more effective than an hour-long online meeting,” Dumas said.
In-person interactions
This study, the researchers write, suggests that the human brain needs in-person interactions to develop properly. This therefore raises concerns about the development of empathy and collaboration among young people who are heavy consumers of technology-assisted communication, especially after two years of pandemic during which much of their life has shifted online.
“There are plenty of experiments in neuroscience that show that there are what are called critical periods, therefore periods that are critical for certain learnings, underlined Mr. Dumas. And if we exceed these periods […] it becomes much more complicated to catch up with the thing than if we learned the thing at the right time in development. »
He cites as examples the acquisition of social norms, acceptance of others and by others, communication and interactions with others, which occur during adolescence.
Technology-assisted communications, he continues, offer possibilities for things that were more difficult in a traditional mode of interaction – like cyberbullying.
“People who would not have acted out in reality have much less difficulty in exhibiting toxic behavior on the Internet,” said Mr. Dumas. According to the literature and our state of knowledge, it would make total sense that, precisely, the disembodiment of the other facilitates these toxic behaviors. »
Technology-assisted communication can offer great benefits, Mr. Dumas pointed out, and allow certain populations to obtain services that would otherwise be inaccessible to them. But there are many examples of situations where less than optimal virtual communication could be problematic. It is therefore questionable whether online psychotherapy is as effective as in person, he pointed out.
The same goes for distance education. In a study published in 2021, undergraduate university students rated remote learning as ranging from “somewhat difficult” to “extremely difficult”.