Modeling Human Communication Dynamics [Social Sciences]

Face-to-face communication is a highly interactive process where participants mutually exchange and interpret verbal and nonverbal messages. Communication dynamics represent the temporal relationship between these communicative messages. Even when only one person speaks at a time, other participants exchange information continuously among themselves and with the speaker through gesture, gaze, posture, and facial expressions. The transactional view of human communication shows an important dynamic between communicative behaviors where each person serves simultaneously as speaker and listener. At the same time you send a message, you also receive messages from your own communications (individual dynamics) as well as from the reactions of the other person(s) (interpersonal dynamics).