Influence of Turn-Taking in a Two-Person Conversation on the Gaze of a Viewer

Abstract

In natural conversation, the minimal gaps and overlaps of the turns at talk indicate an accurate regulation of the timings of the turn-taking system. Here we studied how the turn-taking affects the gaze of a non-involved viewer of a two-person conversation. The subjects were presented with a video of a conversation while their eye gaze was tracked with an infrared camera. As a control, the video was presented without sound and the sound with still image of the speakers. Turns at talk directed the gaze behaviour of the viewers; the gaze followed, rather than predicted, the speakership change around the turn transition. Both visual and auditory cues presented alone also induced gaze shifts towards the speaking person, although significantly less and later than when the cues of both modalities were available. These results show that the organization of turn-taking has a strong influence on the gaze patterns of even non-involved viewers of the conversation, and that visual and auditory cues are in part redundant in guiding the viewers’ gaze.

The development of children’s ability to track and predict turn structure in conversation

“…In both experiments, anticipatory looking was primarily driven by question transitions, a pattern that has not been previously reported in other anticipatory gaze studies, on children or adults (Hirvenkari et al, 2013;Keitel et al, 2013;Tice (Casillas) and Henetz, 2011). Questions make an upcoming speaker switch immediately relevant, helping the listener to predict with high certainty what will happen next (i.e., an answer from the addressee), and are often easily identifiable by overt prosodic and lexicosyntactic cues.…”

“…Prior work using similar experimental procedures has found that adults and children make anticipatory gaze shifts to upcoming talkers within a wide time frame; the earliest shifts occur before the end of the prior turn, and the latest occur after the onset of the response turn, with most shifts occurring in the interturn gap (Hirvenkari et al, 2013;Keitel et al, 2013;Tice (Casillas) and Henetz, 2011). Following prior work, we measured how often our participants shifted their gaze from the prior to the upcoming speaker before the shift in gaze could have been initiated in reaction to the onset of the speaker's response.…”

“…Instead, they used gaze switches during ongoing speech as a baseline. But ongoing speech is the period in which switching is least likely to occur (Hirvenkari et al, 2013)-their baseline thus maximizes the chance of finding a difference in gaze frequency at turn transitions compared to the baseline. A more conservative baseline would compare participants' looking behavior at turn transitions to their looking behavior during randomly selected windows of time throughout the stimulus, including turn transitions.…”

“…and experimental work promoting a combination of cues (lexicosyntactic, prosodic, and pragmatic) as key for accurate turn-end prediction (Duncan, 1972;Ford & Thompson, 1996;Hirvenkari et al, 2013).…”

Perception of co-speech gestures in aphasic patients: A visual exploration study during the observation of dyadic conversations

“…Previous research in multiparty conversations suggests that people most likely look at the person who is speaking or whom they are speaking to (Vertegaal, Slagter, van der Veer, & Nijholt, 2000). In addition, Hirvenkari et al (2013) reported that after a turn transition the gaze is directed towards the speaking person. Therefore it could be assumed that non-involved observers are also inclined to look at the speaker, while following the dyadic conversation.…”