Video increases the perception of naturalness during remote interactions with latency

Abstract

Visual telecommunication systems support natural interaction by allowing users to remotely interact with one another using natural speech and movement. Network connections and computation cause delays that may result in interactions that feel unnatural or belabored. In an experiment using an audiovisual telecommunications device, synchronized audio and video delays were added to participants' conversations to determine how delay would affect conversation. To examine the effects of visual information on conversation, we also compared the audiovisual trials to trials in which participants were presented only the audio information. We present self-report data indicating that delay had a weaker impact when both audio and video channels were available, for delays up to 500 ms, than when only the audio channel was available.