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received: 04 July 2016 accepted: 08 November 2016 Published: 02 December 2016
Prior Knowledge Facilitates Mutual Gaze Convergence and Head Nodding Synchrony in Face-to-face Communication C. Thepsoonthorn, T. Yokozuka, S. Miura, K. Ogawa & Y. Miyake As prior knowledge is claimed to be an essential key to achieve effective education, we are interested in exploring whether prior knowledge enhances communication effectiveness. To demonstrate the effects of prior knowledge, mutual gaze convergence and head nodding synchrony are observed as indicators of communication effectiveness. We conducted an experiment on lecture task between lecturer and student under 2 conditions: prior knowledge and non-prior knowledge. The students in prior knowledge condition were provided the basic information about the lecture content and were assessed their understanding by the experimenter before starting the lecture while the students in non-prior knowledge had none. The result shows that the interaction in prior knowledge condition establishes significantly higher mutual gaze convergence (t(15.03) = 6.72, p
