16 research outputs found
Social interaction in virtual environments: the relationship between mutual gaze, task performance and social presence
Everyday face-to-face social interaction is increasingly being supplemented
by computer- and video-mediated communication. With mediation, however, comes
the potential loss of important non-verbal cues. It is therefore important to attempt to
maintain the quality of the mediated interaction, such that it retains as many of the
aspects of a real-world interaction as possible. Social presence is a measure of how
similar a mediated interaction is to face-to-face, the most socially present situation,
in terms of perceptions of and behaviour towards an interlocutor. Social presence can
be mediated by many factors, one of which is mutual gaze, and social perceptions of
an interlocutor are also thought to be related to task performance. For a successful
interaction, therefore, an optimum amount of mutual gaze for maximising social
presence and task performance is desirable. This research aims to investigate the
relationship between mutual gaze, task performance and social presence, in order to
discover the ideal conditions under which a successful mediated interaction can
occur.
Previous gaze research paradigms have involved one conversational partner
staring continuously at the other, and the resulting mutual gaze being measured. It is
hypothesised that this method may actually suppress mutual gaze, primarily due to
social reasons. It is potentially, therefore, not the optimum experimental design for
mutual gaze research. The first study in this thesis used eye-tracking to explore this
hypothesis and investigate the relationship between mutual gaze and task
performance. A suitable paradigm was developed, based on that used in previous
research into eye movements and non-verbal communication. Two participants –
Instruction Giver (IG) and Instruction Follower (IF) – communicated via avatars in
Second Life to solve simple arithmetic tasks. There were two between-participant
looking conditions: staring (the IG’s avatar stared continuously at the IF); and notstaring,
(IG’s avatar looked at IF and task-relevant objects). Constant staring did,
indeed, show evidence of decreasing mutual gaze within the dyad. Mutual gaze was
positively correlated with task performance scores, but only in the not-staring
condition. When not engaged in mutual gaze, the IF looked more at task-related
objects in the not-staring condition than in the staring condition; this suggests that
social factors are likely to be driving the gaze aversion in the staring condition.
Furthermore, there are no task-related benefits to staring.
The second study explored further how much looking by one person at
another will maximise both mutual gaze and task performance between the dyad. It
also investigated the relationship between mutual gaze, task performance and both
manipulated and perceived social presence. Individual participants interacted with a
virtual agent within the Second Life paradigm previously used in the human-human
study. Participants were either told they were interacting with a computer (i.e. an
agent) or another human (an avatar). This provided the between-participants
manipulated social presence variable, or agency. The virtual agent was programmed
to look at the participant during either 0%, 25%, 50% or 75% of the interaction,
providing the within-participants variable looking condition. The majority of effects
were found in the 75% looking condition, including the highest mutual gaze uptake
and the highest social presence ratings (measured via a questionnaire). Although the
questionnaire did not detect any differences in social presence between the agent and
avatar condition, participants were significantly faster to complete the tasks in the
avatar condition than in the agent condition. This suggests that behavioural measures
may be more effective at detecting differences in social presence than questionnaires
alone. The results are discussed in relation to different theories of social interaction.
Implications and limitations of the findings are considered and suggestions for future
work are made
Start Making Sense: Predicting confidence in virtual human interactions using biometric signals
This is volume 1 of the Measuring Behavior 2020-21 Conference. Volume 2 will follow when the conference takes place in October 2021. www.measuringbehavior.orgPublisher PD
Don't Look Now: The relationship between mutual gaze, task performance and staring in Second Life
Mutual gaze is important to social interaction, and can also facilitate task performance. Previous work has assumed that staring at someone maximises mutual gaze. Eye-tracking is used to explore this claim, along with the relationship between mutual gaze and task performance. Two participants – Instruction Giver (IG) and Instruction Follower (IF) – communicated via avatars in Second Life to solve simple arithmetic tasks. There were two conditions: staring (the IG‟s avatar stared continuously at the IF); and not-staring, (IG‟s avatar looked at IF and task-relevant objects). Instead of maximising mutual gaze, constant staring actually showed evidence of decreasing eye contact within the dyad. Mutual gaze was positively correlated with task performance scores, but only in the not-staring condition. When not engaged in mutual gaze, the IF looked more at task-related objects in the notstaring condition than in the staring condition. Implications and possible future work on social interaction are discussed
Contested Staring: Issues and the use of mutual gaze as an on-line measure of social presence
Despite many of the current social presence measures relying heavily on subjective post-test questionnaires, some researchers have identified the value of using on-line, behavioural measures. Gaze, and specifically mutual gaze, is known to be related to social perceptions of an interlocutor, as well as facilitating task performance during an interaction [1, 2, 17]. Second Life allows for the investigation of task- based interaction in a highly controllable social environment, whilst simultaneously allowing measurement of eye movements (using a head-mounted eye-tracker). A paradigm for measuring eye movements of a user during interaction with an avatar or agent is presented. The potential for using this paradigm to investigate the use of mutual gaze as an on- line measure of social presence is discussed
Don't look now:The relationship between mutual gaze, task performance and staring in Second Life
Mutual gaze is important to social interaction, and can also\ud
facilitate task performance. Previous work has assumed that staring\ud
at someone maximises mutual gaze. Eye-tracking is used to\ud
explore this claim, along with the relationship between mutual\ud
gaze and task performance. Two participants – Instruction Giver\ud
(IG) and Instruction Follower (IF) – communicated via avatars in\ud
Second Life to solve simple arithmetic tasks. There were two\ud
conditions: staring (the IG‟s avatar stared continuously at the IF);\ud
and not-staring, (IG‟s avatar looked at IF and task-relevant\ud
objects). Instead of maximising mutual gaze, constant staring\ud
actually showed evidence of decreasing eye contact within the\ud
dyad. Mutual gaze was positively correlated with task performance\ud
scores, but only in the not-staring condition. When not engaged in\ud
mutual gaze, the IF looked more at task-related objects in the notstaring\ud
condition than in the staring condition. Implications and\ud
possible future work on social interaction are discussed
Investigating Human Response, Behaviour, and Preference in Joint-Task Interaction
Human interaction relies on a wide range of signals, including non-verbal
cues. In order to develop effective Explainable Planning (XAIP) agents it is
important that we understand the range and utility of these communication
channels. Our starting point is existing results from joint task interaction
and their study in cognitive science. Our intention is that these lessons can
inform the design of interaction agents -- including those using planning
techniques -- whose behaviour is conditioned on the user's response, including
affective measures of the user (i.e., explicitly incorporating the user's
affective state within the planning model). We have identified several concepts
at the intersection of plan-based agent behaviour and joint task interaction
and have used these to design two agents: one reactive and the other partially
predictive. We have designed an experiment in order to examine human behaviour
and response as they interact with these agents. In this paper we present the
designed study and the key questions that are being investigated. We also
present the results from an empirical analysis where we examined the behaviour
of the two agents for simulated users