The Closeness to Distance: Virtual Environments and Cognitive Communication Impact

Most students that navigated the virtual classroom format during the pandemic would assert that one of the many academic struggles faced in this time could be narrowed down to one thing; attention. Attention and focus could have been difficult to attain when watching a lecture online during the pandemic. Engagement, therefore, has suffered in the virtual time.

To paraphrase the words of Epictetus; attention shapes us to become who we are. If we are attempting to shape the future leaders of our society, and thereby forming the students and learners of the world, isn't attention an important and vital factor to the success of academic and worldwide goals? If our attention and ideas shape us, like Epictetus states, then what is shaping us will eventually become the world we are constantly creating and perceiving. The world does become the collection of ideas and perspectives that reflect who we are.

Since there has been a spike in decreasing attention these past years, how is this affecting us-shapers of the world, long term and neurobiologically? How is the virtual format affecting cognitive communication? Let's dive into the visual transformations, the sensory, and different analysis of how our closeness to distance has affected student psychology and diverted attention to learning.

An Epidemiologyic Outlook: Attention and Focus

Aside from the changes in our everyday learning environment, our mediatic relationship has also continued to evolve, most importantly, at "an unusual pace" these past years. There has been a shift towards more social media attention, putting academic attention at an interesting position. One might argue, "social media can also converge with educational principles", but in terms of academic purposes, there is a bigger margin of distance from social media and fulfillment of learning.

For instance, the Harris Poll conducted surveys in late March and early May 2020. Their findings show us that between 46% and 51% of US adults reported using social media more since the pandemic started. It's important to consider that 60% of those reporting increasing social media usage, were between ages 18 to 34.

This proves yet another challenge that the pandemic has accelerated. Attention, in this social media case, has further diverted attention from in-classroom time and engagement, calling learners to focus or unfocus.

Attention is a finite source that should be allocated diligently in order to obtain the most from it, but is the virtual format satisfying this need?

The pandemic prompted us to react to various uncalled- for events. One of them was transitioning what would once have been in person classroom teaching to fully online teaching. This change affected students of all levels, from younger ones struggling to stay focused, learning social cues and language culture- to students lacking motivation to learn out of bed. This calls for a certain uneven distribution of attention amongst classes and ages of students. If there is already an uneven distribution amongst the students currently in the educational system, what happens when we compare such students of the pandemic times with those that have experienced education before or after the pandemic? The pandemic came to change momentary and situational conditions but also to implement long lasting and established changes.

What are the different dividends of the fruits from your attention?

If our fruits from learning derive from the fruits of our attention, we are diving into a different form of learning that might be counter productive to the wellbeing of meaningful learning for students. Virtual learning could be transforming school-based learning into mindlessly consumption of information instead of continuous feedback loops in cognition.

"If we engage in something enough, we will eventually be inspired or debilitated by it."

Going back to Epictetus, we are made up of what we put our attention to. The problem is that the amount of time spent consuming something, is not equivalent to the level of attention. Engagement is attention's response, and if engagement in a virtual classroom is not inspiring students and incentivizing them to be creative, we could loose focus on our educational goals.

Virtual Formatting: Natural Interaction Gone Missing

A physical component in our human communication is the subjective impression of those we are conversating with, or with whom there is dialect with. The virtual format, however, might not go beyond its limits to provide this natural interaction.

Aside from paying attention to word meaning, which is essential for communicating in same context and understand what is being said, humans also pay attention to voice modulation. This includes the speed of speech, nonverbal facial cues , or other mannerisms. You might not consider this to play a significant role in your day to day interactions, but think about the 5-6 year old child who is constantly developing an understanding of nonverbal recognition and communication. What this means to development could be deleterious. We are constantly using nonverbal information to better understand what others are presenting to us, engage in mentalizing, so it's important to expand more on the principles of communication.

Let's discuss the components taking part in effective communication. The needs include: making eye contact, allocating turns to talk, monitoring understanding and audience attention, and supporting deixis (which is the ability to see and use artifacts used during the meeting time). Deixis includes documents that the speaker might be discussing, such as drawings, etc. If teaching is a conversation between the student and teacher, all conversationists should move towards achieving the principle goal in dialect; which is to make a point across, interchange ideas, and gain an understanding of what is being shared. To embrace such dialectic goal, gaze awareness should be considered. Gaze attention is the showing of interest, attention, and at times, disagreement. Those communicating should have the awareness of other's gaze direction. Yet another posing challenge of the virtual learning environment is the inhibition of gaze awareness, brought so by the limitations of the virtual format.

To arrive in synthesis, our closeness to distance is something that should be carefully evaluated. In relation to the virtual environment, the face to face modality might prove to be more effective in terms of cognitive communication impact. While technological efforts are being made towards improving visual and auditory components of the virtual format, for now, a presencial modality could be more beneficial. The effect that virtual learning had on younger children was not further discussed here, along with the effects of mask usage in development, impact on the heard of hearing community, amongst other possible impacts for students with learning disabilities or different neurocognitions. Again, long lasting transitions and impacts of the pandemic will be able to be analyzed with educational research in student cognition, learning, and memory.

Lastly, a diagram illustrating conversational analysis.

The effect that interruptions and dialogues have in between conversation shows that the increase in interruptions and thereby less time spoken by one person is more contributive and effective in communicating impact of words. Such type of conversation is very limited in the virtual format. Distributing information calls for interaction and capturing the beginning and end of ideas and statements. This could improve understanding and memory consolidation.

Figure 1. Conversational Game Analysis from https://cyberpsychology.eu/article/view/4205/3246

It is clear that in order to take part in this so called "conversational game", face to face interaction is necessary at a larger scale. It is important to note, that a classroom mindset is being proposed in this statement. One to one online conversations might prove otherwise.

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Take time to practice self evaluation and reflect on the possible long lasting effects the pandemic has left personally-

How has the virtual format affected your learning? How has it diverted your attention? For you, is it easier to focus online or in person? How has the transition from in person to online or online to in person affected your learning and memory?

As always, I prompt you to stay focused on questioning the causes that condition us. Reflect on your learning and how such learning has impacted your perceptions.

Epictetus said it, but I once again reverberate it and make a final prompt; shape the world with the outmost doubt of your perceptions.

Thank you so much for reading!

Sources

Ahmed, A., & Arooj AhmedIam (2020, April 27). Analysis reveals a surge in digital activity and social media growth amid coronavirus pandemic. Digital Information World. https://www.digitalinformationworld.com/2020/04/analysis-reveals-a-surge-in-digital-activity-and-social-media-growth-amid-coronavirus-pandemic.html

Makary, M., & Meissner, H. C. (2021, August 8). Opinion | the case against masks for children. The Wall Street Journal. https://www.wsj.com/articles/masks-children-parenting-schools-mandates-covid-19-coronavirus-pandemic-biden-administration-cdc-11628432716

Samet, A. (2020, July 29). How the coronavirus is changing US social media usage. Insider Intelligence. https://www.emarketer.com/content/how-coronavirus-changing-us-social-media-usage