ABSTRACT

Dispositional communication competencies can be assessed in (a) a generic form that does not include any reference to a particular medium of interaction or in (b) a communication medium-specific version. To date, little is known about the specific media that individuals use as a reference and the weights they assign to them when responding to generic communication items – an important research gap because the use of diverse communication media has risen considerably during the COVID-19 pandemic. Based on media theories, two hypotheses were derived: Generic ratings contain a “hidden” face-to-face (FtF) communication framing that is dominant in the cognitive processing (media naturalness perspective) versus media are equally weighted in the mental aggregate of respondents (adaptation perspective). According to a preregistered study plan, generic and medium-specific communication items were assessed to investigate these hypotheses (referencing FtF, videoconferencing, chat, and e-mail interaction contexts). Training (n = 200) and test (n = 389) datasets were analyzed using latent variable modeling. Results indicated that generic ratings have a strong hidden FtF framing. These hidden framings impact the predictive power of the competencies to explain communication criteria (i.e. communication satisfaction). Exploratory analyses indicated that individual differences in media experience may affect the framings.

摘要

性格沟通能力可以通过 (a) 不包括对特定交互媒介的任何参考的通用形式或 (b) 特定于沟通媒介的版本进行评估。迄今为止，人们对个人用作参考的特定媒体以及他们在回应通用通信项目时分配给他们的权重知之甚少——这是一个重要的研究空白，因为在 COVID-19 大流行期间，多样化通信媒体的使用已大大增加. 基于媒体理论，得出了两个假设： 通用评级包含一个“隐藏的”面对面 (FtF) 沟通框架，该框架在认知处理（媒体自然性视角）中占主导地位，而媒体在受访者的心理总量中具有同等权重（适应视角）。根据预先注册的学习计划，评估了通用和特定于媒体的通信项目以调查这些假设（参考 FtF、视频会议、聊天和电子邮件交互环境）。训练 （n  = 200) 和测试 ( n  = 389) 数据集使用潜在变量建模进行分析。结果表明，通用评级具有很强的隐藏 FtF 框架。这些隐藏的框架会影响解释沟通标准（即沟通满意度）的能力的预测能力。探索性分析表明，媒体体验的个体差异可能会影响框架。