Model: Problem Areas in Sensory Stimuli and Conflict in Communication Mediation.
By Prof. Dr. Alfred-Joachim Hermanni
2019
1 Introduction
From a historical perspective, the 1949 sender-receiver model by Claude E. Shannon and Warren Weaver shaped the understanding of communication as a process of conveying information. On a technical level, the transport of information takes place as a linear, one-way process between a sender/transmitter (who encodes the information into material signals) and a receiver (who decodes the signals).[1]
Originally, the model was developed from the perspective of the telephone medium in order to recognize potential disturbances in signal transmission (e.g. through noise, distorted radio waves or image interference). In this context, a communication was successful if the technical signal transmission was neutral and free of interference and the transmitted message was identical to the received message.
Nowadays, technical impairments between encoded and decoded messages occur to a much lesser extent than in the 20th century, although, for example, cell phone reception can be repeatedly disrupted by external interference despite Wi-Fi networks or the reception of FM radio broadcasts.
2 Problem areas of sensory stimuli and conflicts in communication mediation
These findings regarding the technical transmission of signals raise the question of the extent to which the information content of a message can be affected by other sources of interference in the context of human communication.
According to Alfred-Joachim Hermanni, discrepancies between the encoded and decoded message occur in the phases of the communication process, especially since, in addition to language, non-verbal signals such as facial expressions and gestures are generally sent and human senses influence the transfer process between transmission and reception. [2] Hermanni attempts to identify universal sources of interference in a sender-receiver transmission and distinguishes between four major problem areas:
- Firstly, problem areas that arise from technical complications in signal transmission, including background noise or faulty message reception (see sender-receiver model according to Shannon and Weaver).
- Secondly, problem areas that can arise from a lack of or foreign cultural education. These include educational conflicts (missing knowledge or final certificates, lack of education according to the competency levels of the PISA tests, communication partners come from different cultural backgrounds or belong to different generations, as well as linguistic complications (incorrect or inadequate interpretation of the message due to the use of a foreign language or dialect, translation errors from one language to another).
- Thirdly, there are problem areas that can arise from external and interpersonal stimuli. These include chemical stimuli, skin-intensive stimuli, acoustic impairments and visual impairments:
- Visual impairment (due to light; restriction of visual perception in non-verbal communication, e.g. due to visual impairment, blindness, color weakness).
- Acoustic impairments (due to sound waves, e.g. loud background noise, distractions from parallel conversations, background noise from people, hearing impairments). This can lead to a cocktail party effect (also known as intelligent or selective hearing), in which the human sense of hearing extracts the components of a particular sound source from the mixture of background noise.[3]
- Skin-intensive stimuli (e.g. due to very high or low temperatures, intense touch and pressure, acceleration and mechanical strain, e.g. during sports).
- Chemical stimuli (e.g. due to intense odors such as perfume and sweat, due to distracting senses of taste, e.g. due to eating during the transmission process).
- Interpersonal stimuli (e.g. spontaneous sympathy or antipathy towards other people; the external, visual attractiveness of people in the eye of the beholder; a lack of distance for comfort and/or signals from individuals that they exchange by maintaining a certain distance from one another).
- Lack of congruity (agreement) between verbal (speech) and non-verbal signals (facial expressions and gestures).
4. Fourthly, the problem area of prioritization. People show a particular interest, a preference or a marked tendency towards topics and rank these according to their personal preference. Or they favor certain people and rate their information higher than that of other persons involved in the communication. Or they are pressed for time and only want to hear a summary of the information.
If communication deficits are present due to sources of interference in a sender-receiver transmission, these can be reduced and possibly avoided if agreements are made in advance to encode and decode information in a way that is appropriate for the target group. For example, technical terms and setting priorities could be avoided and the interpersonal communication process (interpersonal interaction) could be regulated.
However, an exchange of information does not necessarily have to take place between two people, but can also involve communication between humans and technology. Here, for example, we are thinking of the areas of “augmented reality”, i.e. the perception of real images with additional information, or “human-computer interactions” (e.g. a person communicates with the vehicle via the voice control of an on-board computer). Corresponding disruptive processes within the problem areas can be attributed to technical complications.
Source: Hermanni, Alfred-Joachim (2019)
[1] Shannon, Claude E./Weaver, Warren (1949): The Mathematical Theory of Communication. In: The Bell System Technical Journal 27 (3-4), pp. 379-423, 623-656. Shannon and Weaver were mathematicians at the
Bell Telephone Company.
[2] Hermanni, Alfred-Joachim (26.12.2019): Problemfelder sensorische Reize und Konflikte in der Kommunikationsvermittlung. URL: https://www.wissensbank.info/EMPIRISCHE-SOZIALFORSCHUNG/Problemfelder-Kommunikationsvermittlung
[3] Cf. Cherry, E. Colin: Some experiments on the recognition of speech, with one and with two ears. In: Journal of the Acoustical Society of America. Band 25, 1953, S. 975–979.
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