Because each participant is using one audio stream and is aware of all the other voices, parallel conversations are impossible. This leads to problems in which group video chats become less collaborative and more like siloed panels, in which only two people at a time talk while the rest listen. That's the kind of multi-tasking your brain is trying, and often failing, to navigate in a group video chat.
Think of how hard it would be to cook and read at the same time. Psychologists call this continuous partial attention, and it applies as much to virtual environments as it does to real ones. “We’re engaged in numerous activities, but never fully devoting ourselves to focus on anything in particular,” says Franklin.
Gallery view-where all meeting participants appear Brady Bunch-style-challenges the brain’s central vision, forcing it to decode so many people at once that no one comes through meaningfully, not even the speaker. Multi-person screens magnify this exhausting problem. Prolonged eye contact has become the strongest facial cue readily available, and it can feel threatening or overly intimate if held too long. “For somebody who’s really dependent on those non-verbal cues, it can be a big drain not to have them,” Franklin says.
If the video quality is poor, any hope of gleaning something from minute facial expressions is dashed. If a person is framed only from the shoulders up, the possibility of viewing hand gestures or other body language is eliminated. However, a typical video call impairs these ingrained abilities, and requires sustained and intense attention to words instead. Since humans evolved as social animals, perceiving these cues comes naturally to most of us, takes little conscious effort to parse, and can lay the groundwork for emotional intimacy. These cues help paint a holistic picture of what is being conveyed and what’s expected in response from the listener.
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