Backchanneling, body language, and praise in intergenerational conversation

Paolo Tayag

(advised by Professor Yoshiko Matsumoto)

VPUE Summer 2022 Linguistics Internship

Sharing Conversations Project

• Using haiku as a tool for facilitating intergenerational conversation

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• 1 hour haiku workshops conducted over zoom and in-person

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• Over the summer, we conducted 5 sessions total

Previous Findings (Matsumoto, Maeda & Wan, 2022)

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Asking open-ended questions

(e.g., Matsumoto, Liao, Xue, 2020)

Using the device of Mutual Revelation

Using physical objects in the immediate environment (Hamilton, 2011; 2020)

Main Goal

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• What kind of techniques do younger audiences tend to employ in intergenerational conversation?
• How do in-person conversations differ from our sessions on Zoom? Is one more effective than the other?

Backchanneling

• Prior research has been inconclusive on the effectiveness of backchanneling in conversation with older audiences
• Strandroos and Antelius (2017) describe backchanneling as necessary for breaking down intergenerational and intercultural barriers
• Research on artificial backchannels produced by AI in virtual neurocognitive disorder screenings claims that older audiences often perceive these backchannels as “rigid” (Ding 2022)
• Two types of backchannels (Ortega et al.)
• Reactive: expressions of interest, often non-lexical (ex. mhm, uh-huh)
• Proactive: encourages listener to continue talking (ex. please continue)

Necessity of basis for engagement

[Excerpt 1]

1 OMP: Mine’s very contemplative, which is my approach to life. (…). I’m an old scientist, and I’m

2 working at an area that’s physics now=

3 YFP: =Uh-huh=

4 OMP: =Yeah (...) and, and we’re doing a hell of a lot of ((incomprehensible)) chemist basically, but,

5 we’re doing a lot of physics now, and developing whole new theories, like the theory of

6 everything which is one of the great physicists like Hawking who died very early (.), um so I’m

7 contemplative but I like to look ahead, kind of look ahead=

8 YFP: =Mm=

9 OMP: =A futurist in a way, and I kind of expressed that here (.) I- I think in today’s generation we’re-

10 we’ve gone through a lot of crap ((incomprehensible)) Trump among them, I’m a- I’m a

11 democrat by the way. But, uh, we- we- we’ve seen a lot of horrible things. We’ve had

12 COVID-19 which is terrible, we’ve had a lot of- we’ve had a lot of disappointment in life,

13 consider young people are not really enthusiastic about life, they’re not, like a lot of them

14 ((incomprehensible)) [knowledge ((incomprehensible))

15 YFP: [Mhm

16 OMP: I was energetic, I was just looking forward, very positive. I’m a positive person, I’m balanced. I

17 feel now that kid- the younger generation doesn’t see any future for themselves.

18 YFP: Mm.

19 OMP: And- and talking to people at, in- in Richmond here, you know, some of them really clearly

20 indicate that they’re pessimistic about the future. And that’s just totally opposite of what I am

21 in life. But again we had a lot going for us. We had GI bill, we had scholarships and

23 fellowships. Everything was falling in place.

Necessity of basis for engagement

[Excerpt 2]

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1 YFP: That’s really pretty.

2 OMP: Yeah. Uh, (...) and I’ll-

3 I don’t know what to say about it though (+smiling) (..[.) um (.)

4 YFP: [(+laughs)

5 YFP: I feel like the nice thing is, you can say anything, I guess (+chuckles)

6 OMP: (...) Um (.)

(10 seconds)

7 YFP: You want me to read a little bit of mine?

8 OMP: Pardon?

9 YFP: You want me to read some of mine?

10 OMP: Okay.

Open body language

• Among people living with dementia, body language (and engaging behaviors as a whole) are reported to be much less commonly used (Driel 2021)

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• Our in-person younger participants often employ this specific pattern:
• Both participants begin by facing forward, towards haiku lesson
• Younger participant leans in towards older participant, then shares something about themself
• Older participant also begins to lean in and speak more openly

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• This pattern is typically accompanied by mutual revelation, after participants have finished writing and discussing their haiku

Open body language

Open body language

Praise

• A study by Engelman (1999) successfully utilized praise as a motivator for increasing engagement in a facility for people living with dementia

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• However, our data indicates that not all praise is equal, and many uses of praise can contribute to the infantilization of PLwDs despite the speaker’s wholesome intentions.

Ineffective uses of praise

[Excerpt 3]

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1 MFP: You have to talk to- you have to talk to people, yep.

2 (7 seconds)

3 AFH: And (.)

4 MFP: I’m trying to Zoom in

5 AFH: I’m trying to Zoom in (.) how perfect! You just made a haiku, OMP!

6 OMP: ((unintel[ligible?))

7 MFP: [Yay

8 AFH: No ((except?))- Zoom can be scary, you have to talk to people, I’m trying to zoom in. Aww, [I like that

9 MFP: [(+laughs)

10 AFH: Wait, can we make one more, maybe?

11 OMP: (+very quietly) No((? Unsure if actually said))

12 MFP: What’s the topic?

13 AFH: What’s the topic? What do you wanna- do you wan-

14 (3 seconds)

15 OMP: “What is the topic” (.) uhh, I ((wouldn’t have?)) asked that question. I (+gibberish) I don’t know what the

16 topic is.

17 AFH: Anything, anything that comes to your mind I guess, now

18 OMP: (+shaking head back and forth)

19 (4 seconds)

20 OMP: Nothing.

Effective uses of praise

[Excerpt 4]

1 OFP: Little black and tan / eyes alight and smiling / my puppy joy brings. (+smile)

2 YMP: Aww, that’s so sweet, (+sm[ile) yeah, that’s awesome. Man ho-how did you-=

3 OFP: [(+smile)

4 YMP:=how many of those did you have before , because like it took me a long time to try to think of

5 [something to write

6 OFP: [The- the one with the pool, I did about six times.

7 YMP: I see, yes yes.

8 OFP: And the one with the dog um I think I did only three.

9 YMP: Okay, gotcha. Alright, so yeah lemme- lemme share mine now, I’ll-I’ll share my picture too here,

10 um (.) so yeah I-I-I did winter and I like sunsets a lot so I have this picture of like (+sharing his

11 photo on screen) maybe like a sunset on a winter day [and uh

12 OFP: [Oh wow=

13 YMP: =and yeah and then what I wrote was um A small lonely bench / cold bitter winds, warming

14 sun / I sit down and rest. [And um

15 OFP: [(+nod)=

16 YMP: =yeah! That’s- I don’t know it- I don’t know why it took me so long to like, it’s-it’s-it’s only like what like,

17 uhh, 17 syllables right? But it still takes so long to-uh think, think of them, But[ (.) yeah

18 OFP: [oh cause you had

19 thoughts first, and put your thoughts down [and you look at=

20 YMP: [yeah, yeah

21 OFP: =the picture (.) and you say “no, you know I can do- I can express this better”

Future extensions

• Repeated haiku sessions with same participants
• Multi-part haiku sessions

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• Overall, we hope to provide the foundations for developing open and inclusive communicative environments for people of all ages and cognitive conditions!