Monroe Research Week One - Done.

This week has been incredibly busy!  As hot and humid as Williamsburg is, I absolutely love being back.  It's been really wonderful to reconnect with friends, and reconnect with the campus (though it definitely feels deserted).  I'm living in Jefferson, on the same hall as Sophomore year!  It's a bit strange being back in the same building with a different roommate and a different lifestyle - not going to class is definitely a bit bizzare.  But anyways, here is my first Monroe Blog (copied from http://upperclassmonroe.blogs.wm.edu/author/sckyle/):


It’s hard to believe that my first week of research is almost over!  These first few days have been primarily focused on background research and administration-type tasks.  My project really began to take off in late April, when my study was finally approved by the PHSC!  I had been stressed about the approval process, since I wanted to have everything taken care of before I came back to campus to start my research.  On top of it all, I was abroad last semester, and a five hour time difference definitely disrupts communication.  But in the end, it all worked out smoothly, and now I am in the midst of my research!  This week I have accomplished some major goals:  I secured a space for the actual testing of the participants in my study, and a couple of professors in the Psychology Department have been so wonderful as to let me talk about my project to their students in the hopes of recruiting them as participants!  I hope to begin testing in week 3 (around June 13), but that is very dependent on my communication with potential participants, and spreading the word as quickly as possible.

Also, I should mention that my project has changed slightly since I first posted the abstract.  Instead of describing movement/non-movement situations, the participants are going to tell their partner an exciting personal experience.  They will then repeat this story to a non-participant (because I am not observing them, they are not participants) via chat and video-chat.

In my reading (the primary task of this week), I’ve discovered that there is actually a lot of material out there on gesture and the use of nonverbal communication.  I’ve even found a couple of studies looking at the use of gesture in conversation despite the visual absence of a participant’s partner (usually the partner is hidden behind a screen) – which is extremely relevant to my research!  It’s exciting to know that my research fits into an existing topic, especially in an up-and-coming field!  Gesture studies have really taken off since about 1970, and with the addition of Computer-Mediated Communication (CMC) studies, this field is very new and exciting!  On entering my research, I did not know so much previous literature existed, and it is so encouraging to know that I can tie my own studies back to a well-developed field of research.