title: Neglect in human communication: quantifying the cost of cell-phone interruptions in face to face dialogs.
abstract: There is a prevailing belief that interruptions using cellular phones during face to face interactions may affect severely how people relate and perceive each other. We set out to determine this cost quantitatively through an experiment performed in dyads, in a large audience in a TEDx event. One of the two participants (the speaker) narrates a story vividly. The listener is asked to deliberately ignore the speaker during part of the story (for instance, attending to their cell-phone). The speaker is not aware of this treatment. We show that total amount of attention is the major factor driving subjective beliefs about the story and the conversational partner. The effects are mostly independent on how attention is distributed in time. All social parameters of human communication are affected by attention time with a sole exception: the perceived emotion of the story. Interruptions during day-to-day communication between peers are extremely frequent. Our data should provide a note of caution, by indicating that they have a major effect on the perception people have about what they say (whether it is interesting or not . . .) and about the virtues of the people around them.
authors.affiliation: Laboratorio de Inteligencia Artificial Aplicada, Departamento de Computación, Facultad de Ciencias Exactas y Naturales, Universidad de Buenos Aires, Pabellón 1, Ciudad Universitaria, 1428 Buenos Aires, Argentina; Laboratorio de Neurociencia, Universidad Torcuato Di Tella, Av. Figueroa Alcorta 7350, (C1428BCW) Ciudad de Buenos Aires, Argentina.
authors.forename: Matías
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Lopez-Rosenfeld
authors.affiliation: Laboratorio de Neurociencia, Universidad Torcuato Di Tella, Av. Figueroa Alcorta 7350, (C1428BCW) Ciudad de Buenos Aires, Argentina.
authors.forename: Cecilia I
authors.initials: CI
authors.lastname: Calero
authors.affiliation: Laboratorio de Inteligencia Artificial Aplicada, Departamento de Computación, Facultad de Ciencias Exactas y Naturales, Universidad de Buenos Aires, Pabellón 1, Ciudad Universitaria, 1428 Buenos Aires, Argentina.
authors.forename: Diego
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Fernandez Slezak
authors.affiliation: El Mundo de las Ideas, Buenos Aires, Argentina.
authors.forename: Gerry
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Garbulsky
authors.affiliation: Laboratorio de Neurociencia, Universidad Torcuato Di Tella, Av. Figueroa Alcorta 7350, (C1428BCW) Ciudad de Buenos Aires, Argentina.
authors.forename: Mariano
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Bergman
authors.affiliation: Departamento de Física, Facultad de Ciencias Exactas y Naturales, Universidad de Buenos Aires, Buenos Aires, Argentina.
authors.forename: Marcos
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Trevisan
authors.affiliation: Laboratorio de Neurociencia, Universidad Torcuato Di Tella, Av. Figueroa Alcorta 7350, (C1428BCW) Ciudad de Buenos Aires, Argentina.
authors.forename: Mariano
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Sigman
mesh_terms: D000066949:Biobehavioral Sciences; D040421:Cell Phone; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D014705:Verbal Behavior / Q000502:physiology*