Supplementary file 1_Beyond camera presence: individual differences and emotional climate shape conversational memory in online meetings.docx

The cognitive-load (Zoom-fatigue) framework predicts impairment, whereas the social-presence framework predicts facilitation. We adjudicated these competing predictions in a within-subjects experiment in which 86 university students conversed dyadically with confederates on a custom WebRTC platform across four conditions: camera-off, and camera-on with positive, neutral, or negative emotional climates.

After the conversation, a surprise free-recall test measured memory for the partner’s spoken content. Linear mixed-effects modeling (marginal R² = 0.15; conditional R² = 0.34) revealed that recall was reliably predicted by sex (β = −0.21, p = 0.006) and agreeableness (β = −0.20, p = 0.006), but not by camera presence. Extraversion further interacted with the neutral climate (β = −0.13, p = 0.021), such that extraverts recalled less when their partner displayed no interpretable socioemotional cues.