The Relationship between Classroom Seating Locations and Instructor-Student Entrainment: A Video Analysis Study

In face-to-face communication, the listener´s body movements are often observed to occur nearly simultaneously with changes in the speaker´s voice pattern. This synchronization between speaker and listener, which we call entrainment, reflects the relationship between the speaker and the listener. The present study investigated the relationship between classroom seating positions and instructor-student entrainment. Four university instructors gave 60-minute lectures to classes of 36-64 students in 150-seat classrooms. The body movements of the students were captured using a video camera located in the front of the lecture room, and the voices of instructors were recorded via a microphone. For each pixel, the covariance between the sound level changes of a instructor´s voice and the power of the brightness fluctuations of the pixel was calculated as an index of the entrainment level of each location in the classroom. The results suggested that students sitting in the middle row of the middle column in the classroom showed higher entrainment levels. Moreover, changes of entrainment level were found to reflect changes in students´ interest in the lecture.