The Effects of Group Member Experience and Task Complexity on Computer Mediated Collaborative Groups Facing Deception

Individuals often work together in environments where computers mediate their communication. One key area affected by computer mediated communication in group settings is the transmission of cues to deception. If cues to deception are filtered, such as they are with computer-mediated communication, deception detection accuracy can be hindered due to the lack of cues available, and group task performance can be lowered. Past deception research was not very applicable to many business settings since the tasks studied did not mimic the interactive, computer-mediated group settings where business decisions are often made. Past research also did not look at the influences of individuals’ familiarity with each other and their task complexity, which are key parts of group decision-making processes. We plan to conduct two experiments that simulate organizational collaborative group settings by having groups of subjects perform a computer-mediated collaborative task. Our experimental task will be a computerized strategy game where groups of subjects will methodically search a game board for a fixed number of targets, which they will attempt to destroy on their final turn. We will manipulate subjects’ task complexity and group members’ familiarity with each other in the experiments. We will then look at how their task performance and deception detection accuracy are influenced by these factors when they are facing a deceptive group member

Deception Detection, Task complexity, and Group Member Experience in Computer-Mediated Group Settings

Due to globalization and the increased availability of online collaboration tools, individuals are now likely to work together in settings where computers are their primary mode of communication. However, because communication characteristics are different in these settings, problems can arise, such as deception. Deceptive individuals may be difficult to detect over computer-based channels because many audio and visual cues to deception are filtered and communication tendencies are different. This paper presents two experiments where groups performed a collaborative task in a text-based, computer-mediated setting with and without confederate deceivers. The results show that deceivers were very successful in this setting, that groups performing a low complexity task were better at detecting deception than were groups performing a high complexity task, and that groups with members that had experience with each other had higher task performance but did not have higher deception detection accuracy than did inexperienced groups

Leader Member Exchange: An Interactive Framework to Uncover a Deceptive Insider as Revealed by Human Sensors

This study intends to provide a theoretical ground that conceptualizes the prospect of detecting insider threats based on leader-member exchange. This framework specifically corresponds to two propositions raised by Ho, Kaarst-Brown et al. [42]. Team members that are geographically co-located or dispersed are analogized as human sensors in social networks with the ability to collectively “react” to deception, even when the act of deception itself is not obvious to any one member. Close interactive relationships are the key to afford a network of human sensors an opportunity to formulate baseline knowledge of a deceptive insider. The research hypothesizes that groups unknowingly impacted by a deceptive leader are likely to use certain language-action cues when interacting with each other after a leader violates group trust

Understanding Collaborative Sensemaking for System Design — An Investigation of Musicians\u27 Practice

There is surprisingly little written in information science and technology literature about the design of tools used to support the collaboration of creators. Understanding collaborative sensemaking through the use of language has been traditionally applied to non-work domains, but this method is also well-suited for informing hypotheses about the design collaborative systems. The presence of ubiquitous, mobile technology, and development of multi-user virtual spaces invites investigation of design which is based on naturalistic, real world, creative group behaviors, including the collaborative work of musicians. This thesis is considering the co-construction of new (musical) knowledge by small groups. Co-construction of new knowledge is critical to the definition of an information system because it emphasizes coordination and resource sharing among group members (versus individual members independently doing their own tasks and only coming together to collate their contributions as a final product). This work situates the locus of creativity on the process itself, rather than on the output (the musical result) or the individuals (members of the band). This thesis describes a way to apply quantitative observations to inform qualitative assessment of the characteristics of collaborative sensemaking in groups. Conversational data were obtained from nine face-to-face collaborative composing sessions, involving three separate bands producing 18 hours of recorded interactions. Topical characteristics of the discussion, namely objects, plans, properties and performance; as well as emergent patterns of generative, evaluative, revision, and management conversational acts within the group were seen as indicative of knowledge construction. The findings report the use of collaborative pathways: iterative cycles of generation, evaluation and revision of temporary solutions used to move the collaboration forward. In addition, bracketing of temporary solutions served to help collaborators reuse content and offload attentional resources. Ambiguity in language, evaluation criteria, goal formation, and group awareness meant that existing knowledge representations were insufficient in making sense of incoming data and necessitated reformulating those representations. Further, strategic use of affective language was found to be instrumental in bridging knowledge gaps. Based on these findings, features of a collaborative system are proposed to help in facilitating sensemaking routines at various stages of a creative task. This research contributes to the theoretical understanding of collaborative sensemaking during non-work, creative activities in order to inform the design of systems for supporting these activities. By studying an environment which forms a potential microcosm of virtual interaction between groups, it provides a framework for understanding and automating collaborative discussion content in terms of the features of dialogue

Transactive Memory System, Job Competence and Individual Performance

The purpose of this paper is to understand important variables that impact individual performance within a team. This will enhance knowledge management within a team context and facilitate competence development of individuals. This research proposes and examines a multi-level model which elaborates how transactive memory system and job competence (i.e., technology competence and teamwork competence) affect individual performance. An empirical study was conducted with 19 teams of television news reporters, with 211 valid survey responses. Hierarchical linear modeling was applied to analyze the data. The result indicated that transactive memory system and technology competence helped to improve a reporter’s job performance. Furthermore, the relationships were fully mediated by teamwork competence. Our findings thus suggest teamwork competence is the core. Neither technology competence nor transactive memory system will necessarily translate directly into enhanced individual performance. Therefore, for organizational investment on transactive memory system and digital technologies to take effect, management should help develop the employee’s teamwork competence

Enabling autistic sociality: unrealised potentials in two-sided social interaction

Research on autism, which is defined as a life-long developmental disability affecting social interaction, has focussed predominantly on how autistic individuals perceive and interact with others with less emphasis on the perspectives of their interactional partners. Yet autistic viewpoints have highlighted how other people are part of a two-way breakdown in interaction originating from differences between people rather than the deficit of any one individual, a phenomenon known as the double empathy problem. A gap therefore exists in the literature in terms of understanding how autistic sociality (i.e. the range of social opportunities possible for a given individual on the spectrum) is shaped by different interactional partners. This thesis examines the double empathy problem in three interactional contexts. Study 1 examines relationships between autistic people and their family members through focussing on perspective-taking, the ability to impute mental states to others. In light of prior research where autistic abilities have been assessed using abstract scenarios, Study 1 implements a two-way measure of perspective-taking which considers both sides of 22 real-life relationships (n=44) consisting of autistic adults and their family members, to understand how autistic people are seen by familiar others as well as vice versa. It uses a mixed-methods approach, where members of each dyad were individually asked about 12 topics, providing quantitative scores and qualitative explanation of their rating of Self, their rating of their partner, and their predicted rating by their partner. Comparison of perspectives provided a means for detecting misunderstandings and their underlying rationale. The contribution of Study 1 is that it shows perspective-taking is two-sided: family members can be biased in underestimating the perspective-taking of their autistic relatives, while autistic adults are aware of being negatively viewed despite disagreeing with such views. Study 2 examines interactions between autistic adults (n=30) partaking in a naturally occurring activity of video-gaming at a charity. It is a qualitative study using participant observation, with each conversational turn systematically rated in terms of coherence, affect and symmetry to identify the key features of neurodivergent intersubjectivity, the process through which autistic people build shared understanding in their own non-normative ways. The contribution of Study 2 is to identify two forms of neurodivergent intersubjectivity which enable shared understanding to be achieved, but which have traditionally been viewed as undesirable from a normative social viewpoint: a generous assumption of common ground that, when understood, lead to rapid rapport, and, when not understood, resulted in potentially disruptive utterances; and a low demand for coordination that ameliorated many challenges associated with disruptive turns. Study 3 examines interactions involving lay people (n=256) who believe they are interacting with an autistic partner through an online collaborative game, when in fact they are playing with an intelligent virtual agent (IVA) who behaves the same way for all participants. Its contribution is methodological as it develops a new application for simulating interactions in experimental research called Dyad3D. Study 3 uses Dyad3D to explore how disclosure of an autism diagnosis by the IVA affects social perception and social behaviour in comparison to a disclosure of dyslexia and a condition where there is no diagnostic disclosure. Combined with a post-game questionnaire, Study 3 triangulates self-reported (quantitative rating scales and qualitative explanation) and behavioural measures (quantitative scores of actions within the game) to understand the interplay of positive and negative discrimination elicited through using the label of autism. It highlights that diagnostic disclosure of autism leads to significant positive bias in social perception when compared to a disclosure of dyslexia or a no disclosure condition; yet participants are not as helpful towards the autistic IVA as they think they are, indicating a potential bias in helping behaviour. The thesis takes an abductive methodological approach which integrates with a wider call for a more participatory model of research in the study of autism. Abduction is a form of reasoning which involves the iterative development of a hypothesis that holds the best explanatory scope for the underlying phenomena observed. It is inherently aligned with a participatory model of research because abduction involves the ongoing exploration of ideas that may originate from multiple sources (i.e. interactions with autistic people as well as research outputs). Taking a more holistic approach to the development of knowledge with autistic people which recognises the legitimacy of different claims to knowledge is important, because prior research in the field has often failed to critically reflect on researcherparticipant positionality and the principals underlying the development of research agenda. For this reason, the thesis details the participatory activities which surround and interconnect with the development of the three empirical studies. Overall the thesis contributes to understanding autistic sociality as a dynamic, interactionally shaped process. It reasons that autistic people have unrealised social potential, both in terms of imagining other perspectives (Study 1) and coordinating with others (Study 2). However, such social potential may not be easily recognised by other non-autistic people who may be biased in their assumptions about autism (Study 1 and Study 3). Consequently, the evidence presented in this thesis helps to explain some of the processes that underscore the double empathy problems reported in literature, including poor mental health (because autistic people are aware that they are misunderstood by others, see Study 1), employment prospects (because autistic social potential is under-recognised by others, see Study 1 and 3), and quality of life (because neurotypical standards of communication are not compatible with neurodivergent forms of intersubjectivity, see Study 2). The thesis therefore makes suggestions for how we design enabling environments which are sensitive to the dynamic factors that can enable autistic sociality to flourish

The impact of virtuality on team effectiveness in organizational and non‐organizational teams:A meta‐analysis

We meta-analytically assess the virtuality-team effectiveness relationship using 73 samples of organizational teams (5738 teams) reporting on a wide range of productive (e.g. earnings), performance (e.g. customer ratings), social (e.g. cohesion), and team member (e.g. project satisfaction) outcomes. Our results suggest that in work organizations, virtuality is not a direct input—negative or positive—to team effectiveness. In contrast, using 109 samples of non-organizational teams (5620 teams), we show that virtuality is a significant negative input to team effectiveness. We also meta-analytically assess the issue of results generalizability from non-organizational to organizational settings, and find that overall, results from non-organizational studies largely fail to generalize to organizational virtual teams. Using moderator analysis, we explore a number of study features that may explain the poor results generalizability from non-organizational to organizational studies. We find that results from non-organizational studies using undergraduate students, short team duration, and laboratory settings drive the non-generalizability effect, whereas results from non-organizational studies using graduate students, longer team duration, and classroom settings produce results comparable to those of organizational studies of virtual teams. Theoretical, methodological, and practical implications are discussed