Exploration of the Detectable Structure of Social Episodes: The Parsing of Interaction Specimens
Title:
Exploration of the Detectable Structure of Social Episodes: The Parsing of Interaction Specimens
Author:
Ginsburg, G. P. Smith, David Lawson
Appeared in:
Ecological psychology
Paging:
Volume 5 (1993) nr. 3 pages 195-233
Year:
1993-09-01
Contents:
We report a series of three studies that jointly examine the applicability of the ecological perspective to social perception. First, we extended Newtson's (1973) parsing procedure to the identification of perceptually detectable action units in three naturalistic video specimens of men attempting to pick up women in a disco. Observers were able to parse the episodes into both large and small action units and to do so under specified conditions with generally high interobserver agreement. Second, independent observers gave brief verbal descriptions of each action unit created by the parsing procedure of Study 1, and action units were identified that were common in content and in location across the three speci- mens. Third, the accuracy and immediacy with which viewers identified the interaction as a pickup episode were assessed using five versions of the episode: (a) an intact version, (b) a version containing only those actions found in common in all specimens, (c) a version containing all actions except those found in common across specimens, (d) a version with all actions but with the common actions randomly relocated, and (e) a version with all actions but with the noncommon actions randomly relocated (and the common actions retained in their original location). Viewers were much less likely to identify the episode correctly, and reported taking longer to do so, when presented with versions in which common elements had been relocated or excised; in contrast, viewers' impressions were as accurate and immediate with the common action versions as with the intact version. These results affirm the applicability of the ecological perspective to the study of perception in complex social episodes. The next step is to identify the actual content of the invariant structural features.
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