Don't Look Now: The relationship between mutual gaze, task performance and staring in Second Life

Don't Look Now: The relationship between mutual gaze, task performance and staring in Second Life Sara Dalzel-Job1OverviewGaze and mutual gaze - backgroundEye movements in virtual environments Second LifePrevious studyLimitationsWhats next?

2Don't Look Now: The relationship between mutual gaze, task performance and staring in Second Life2Gaze and Mutual Gaze background Mutual Gaze:Social accessibilityAffiliative conflict theory (Argyle & Dean, 1965) anxiety?Facilitates task performanceFry and Smith (1975); Fullwood and Doherty-Sneddon (2006)Shared GazeJoint attentionMutual gaze, full gaze awareness and effective communication Monk & Gale (2002)

3Don't Look Now: The relationship between mutual gaze, task performance and staring in Second LifeMutual gaze, or eye contact, is a fundamental part of human interaction. It has several functions:Social accessibility - maintaining eye contact a willingness to engage in, and a commitment to continuing, an interactionFunctional purposes such as changing gaze direction to signal to your conversational partner what youre referring to.Eye contact between a dyad is also regulated by other social aspects, such as how much person a is drawn to person b in an affiliative way (higher affiliation will lead to more EC), or to what extent a is in competition with b (more competition will lead to more EC). The authors discuss the affiliative conflict theory, according to which, there is a need for feedback in an interaction, as well as affiliative (social) needs, leading to approach. Eye contact can be used as a reinforcer in the operative conditioning of verbal behavior. A fear of being seen and revealing inner states lead to rejecting, or avoidance, responses. If this theory is true, then there should be an equilibrium level of eye contact for one person in social contact with another, which will be mediated by other behaviours linked to affiliative motivation. Thus there will be an equilibrium point of physical closeness, of intimacy of conversation, and amount of smiling. The more these behavoirs occur, the more affiliative motivation is satisfied, but if they go too far, anxiety is created. According to this equilibrium equation, if one of the components is changed (in this case physical proximity), then another component in the equation will need to alter to compensate, thus maintaining equilibrium. Confederate across a table from a participant, constant looking at participant, the amount of eye contact was judged by someone else the closer they were together, the less eye contact participants were willing to engage inStephenson & rutter (1970) maybe looking at ears instead of eyes can the observer judge the differenceResponse this is only relevant in interactions where ear and shoulder glances were commonplace.Monk and Gale (2002) define mutual gaze as knowing whether someone is looking at you. They looked at the benefits of having access to mutual gaze and full gaze awareness, compared to audio alone during VMC. Full gaze awareness was defined as the ability to gauge the current object of someone elses visual attention. They found that, in terms of the efficiency of the conversation, full gaze awareness reduced the need for the use of verbal language, and that it was far superior in this respect to mutual gaze alone. problems with screen space. VMC does not usually support mutual gaze. Due to the importance of the functions, and social benefits, of mutual gaze during an interaction, it appears that it, as well as full gaze awareness should be included in an interface to maximise access to nonverbal cues during an interaction an ideal interface would be one which supports mutual gaze and full gaze awareness.How much space in an IVE does a person leave an agent that is constantly staring at them i.e. maintaining constant eye contact with them.

3Gaze and Mutual Gaze background Investigating mutual gaze:Argyle & Dean (1965)Bailenson et al. (2001, 2004)Limitations4Don't Look Now: The relationship between mutual gaze, task performance and staring in Second LifeHow do we measure it:

Currently, with constant looking by a confederate, and either an observer judging how much a participant looks at the confederate, or eye tracking measures.

4Gaze and Mutual Gaze background Investigating mutual gaze:Argyle & Dean (1965)Bailenson et al. (2001, 2004)Limitations

To be subjected to the continual gaze of another is a very unnerving experience, for to be the object of anothers attention is to be vulnerable to him. (Kendon, 1967) 5Don't Look Now: The relationship between mutual gaze, task performance and staring in Second LifeBut:UncomfortableSocially inappropriateBehaviourally unrealisticNot great for researching social interaction5Questions of InterestDoes staring by one conversational partner at another maximise mutual gaze between the dyad?If not, where does the stared-at person look instead of returning the gaze?Does mutual gaze facilitate task performance?What about if youre being stared at?6Don't Look Now: The relationship between mutual gaze, task performance and staring in Second Life6Second LifeBusiness, learning, socialisingAdaptable to different domainsBuild a task/paradigm easily and cheaplyAdapt it to answer the question you requireUser-friendly interfaceFreely available for public useBehaviourally realistic avatarsRealistic eye and body movementsCan program to act as an agent / bot

Useful for studying social interactions in a highly controlled environment

7Don't Look Now: The relationship between mutual gaze, task performance and staring in Second LifeUsed for business, learning, socialisingAdaptable The environment is such that it can be adapted to different domains, so that the user can carry out different tasks whilst still being the same 3D virtual environment. You can import a given task, such as teaching a method or a procedure, and evaluate the method by recording the screen and analysing events post-procedure.For example task performance learning/recall etc, eye movements or avatar body movements within an environment Relatively easy to use interface easy to pick upAnother, more practical reason for using SL is that it is freely available for public use. Default and manipulated avatar behaviour is very realistic:More likely to treat as a person More scope to draw inferences about how people act in a social situationAlso human-like appearance. Finally, it is possible to program an avatar to act as a robot so you have control over its behaviour

This means that it is a useful platform for investigation of social interactions in a highly controllable environment.

7Eye movements in Second Life

8Don't Look Now: The relationship between mutual gaze, task performance and staring in Second LifeUsing eyes to drive an avatar (Vickers et al, 2008)Eye movements in response to redundant vs. necessary gestures (Dalzel-Job et al., 2008)Mutual gaze and interpersonal distance between avatars in SL (Yee et al., 2007)Most current eye movement research within Second Life involves using the eyes to control your avatarEspecially valuable for individuals with physical disabilities that inhibit them from using a standard mouse and keyboard to control an avatarDalzel-Job, Nicol and Oberlander (2008), recorded users eye movements during a task-orientated interaction with a programmed avatar (agent) to investigate how individuals respond to informative compared with redundant gestures in SL. Yee et al. (2007) investigated mutual gaze and interpersonal distance with an avatar in a virtual environment, and found that, on the whole, such interactions were governed by the same social norms as those in the real world. This was another variation of Argyles Equilibrium Theory paradigm, although they were observing eye contact and interpersonal distance between avatars in SL, rather than the people controlling them. BUT no studies measuring a users eye movements during interaction with another user in SL

8Design Instruction Givers View

9Don't Look Now: The relationship between mutual gaze, task performance and staring in Second Life2 participants Instruction Giver, Instruction Follower2 conditions informative and uninformative. Uninformative, or STARING condition instruction giver stares at the instruction follower whilst giving instructions.Informative, or NON-STARING condition instruction giver looks at the instruction follower periodically, and looks at the shapes and numbers that hes describing as he describes them. Although avatar gaze behaviour is informative, its redundant its not necessary to look at the avatar in order to complete the tasks.15 tasks simple sums to complete Instruction follower view on the left clicks on whichever they think is the correct answer tile 13 in this case.Tasks were balanced across conditions

9Design Instruction Givers View

Instruction Follower's View

10Don't Look Now: The relationship between mutual gaze, task performance and staring in Second Life2 participants Instruction Giver, Instruction Follower2 conditions informative and uninformative. Uninformative, or STARING condition instruction giver stares at the instruction follower whilst giving instructions.Informative, or NON-STARING condition instruction giver looks at the instruction follower periodically, and looks at the shapes and numbers that hes describing as he describes them. Although avatar gaze behaviour is informative, its redundant its not necessary to look at the avatar in order to complete the tasks.15 tasks simple sums to complete Instruction follower view on the left clicks on whichever they think is the correct answer tile 13 in this case.Tasks were balanced across conditions

10Design Instruction Givers View

Instruction Follower's View

2 conditions Informative and Uninformative; 15 tasks in each52 participants; 27F; mean age 23.411Don't Look Now: The relationship between mutual gaze, task performance and staring in Second Life2 participants Instruction Giver, Instruction Follower2 conditions informative and uninformative. Uninformative, or STARING condition instruction giver stares at the instruction follower whilst giving instructions.Informative, or NON-STARING condition instruction giver looks at the instruction follower periodically, and looks at the shapes and numbers that hes describing as he describes them. Although avatar gaze behaviour is informative, its redundant its not necessary to look at the avatar in order to complete the tasks.15 tasks simple sums to complete Instruction follower view on the left clicks on whichever they think is the correct answer tile 13 in this case.Tasks were balanced across conditions

11View of Instruction Follower

12Don't Look Now: The relationship between mutual gaze, task performance and staring in Second Life12Results Gaze

t(21)=2.705; p