Visual interaction and conversational activity

Abstract

In addition to the contents of their speech, people who are engaged in a conversation express themselves in many nonverbal ways. This means that people interact and are attended to even when they are not speaking. In this pilot study, we created an experimental setup for a three-party interactive situation where one of the participants remained silent throughout the session, and the gaze of one of the active subjects was tracked. The eye-tracked subject was unaware of the setup. The pilot study used only two test subjects, but the results provide some clues towards estimating how the behavior and activity of the non-speaking participant might affect other participants' conversational activity and the situation itself. We also found that the speaker's gaze activity is different in the beginning of the utterance than at the end of the utterance, indicating that the speaker's focus of attention towards the partner differs depending on the turn taking situation. Using the experience gained in this trial, we point out several things to consider that might help to avoid pitfalls when designing a more extensive study into the subject.