As prior knowledge is claimed to be an essential key to achieve effective education, we are interested in exploring whether prior knowledge enhances communication effectiveness. To demonstrate the effects of prior knowledge, mutual gaze convergence and head nodding synchrony are observed as indicators of communication effectiveness. We conducted an experiment on lecture task between lecturer and student under 2 conditions: prior knowledge and non-prior knowledge. The students in prior knowledge condition were provided the basic information about the lecture content and were assessed their understanding by the experimenter before starting the lecture while the students in non-prior knowledge had none. The result shows that the interaction in prior knowledge condition establishes significantly higher mutual gaze convergence (t(15.03) = 6.72, p < 0.0001; α = 0.05, n = 20) and head nodding synchrony (t(16.67) = 1.83, p = 0.04; α = 0.05, n = 19) compared to non-prior knowledge condition. This study reveals that prior knowledge facilitates mutual gaze convergence and head nodding synchrony. Furthermore, the interaction with and without prior knowledge can be evaluated by measuring or observing mutual gaze convergence and head nodding synchrony.

Embodied synchronization is widely observed in human communication, and is considered to be important in generating empathy during face-to-face communication. However, the quantitative relationship between body motion synchronization and degree of empathy is not fully understood. Therefore, we focused on head motion to investigate phase and frequency differences in head motion synchronization in relation to degree of empathy. We specifically conducted a lecture-based experiment using controlled spoken text divided into two parts: high empathy and low empathy. During the lecture, we measured the acceleration of speakers’ and listeners’ head motions using an accelerometer, and calculated the synchronization between the time-series data from their acceleration norms. The results showed greater head motion synchronization during high empathy. During high empathy, the speakers’ head motions began before those of listeners’ in the medium (2.5 to 3.5 Hz) and high (4.0 to 5.0 Hz) frequency ranges, whereas the speakers’ head motions tended to start later than those of the listeners’ in the low (1.0 to 2.0 Hz) and medium (2.5 to 3.5 Hz) frequency ranges. This suggests that the degree of empathy is reflected by a different relationship between the phase and frequency of head motion synchronization during face-to-face communication.

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