Gaze in a real-world social interaction: A dual eye-tracking study

People communicate using verbal and non-verbal cues, including gaze cues. Gaze allocation can be influenced by social factors; however, most research on gaze cueing has not considered these factors. The presence of social roles was manipulated in a natural, everyday collaborative task while eye move...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inQuarterly journal of experimental psychology (2006) Vol. 71; no. 10; pp. 2162 - 2173
Main Authors Macdonald, Ross G, Tatler, Benjamin W
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published London, England SAGE Publications 01.10.2018
Sage Publications Ltd
Subjects
Analysis of Variance
Attention - physiology
Cues
Eye Movement Measurements
Female
Fixation, Ocular - physiology
Humans
Interpersonal Relations
Male
Social Behavior
Social interaction
social interaction
eye movements
Social attention
joint attention
gaze cues
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Summary:People communicate using verbal and non-verbal cues, including gaze cues. Gaze allocation can be influenced by social factors; however, most research on gaze cueing has not considered these factors. The presence of social roles was manipulated in a natural, everyday collaborative task while eye movements were measured. In pairs, participants worked together to make a cake. Half of the pairs were given roles (“Chef” or “Gatherer”) and the other half were not. Across all participants we found, contrary to the results of static-image experiments, that participants spent very little time looking at each other, challenging the generalisability of the conclusions from lab-based paradigms. However, participants were more likely than not to look at their partner when receiving an instruction, highlighting the typical coordination of gaze cues and verbal communication in natural interactions. The mean duration of instances in which the partners looked at each other (partner gaze) was longer in the roles condition, and these participants were quicker to align their gaze with their partners (shared gaze). In addition, we found some indication that when hearing spoken instructions, listeners in the roles condition looked at the speaker more than listeners in the no roles condition. We conclude that social context can affect our gaze behaviour during a social interaction.
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ISSN:1747-0218
1747-0226
DOI:10.1177/1747021817739221