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-Job

Overview Gaze and mutual gaze - background Eye movements in virtual environments Second Life Previous study Limitations What’s next? 2 Don't Look Now: The relationship between mutual gaze, task performance and staring in Second Life

Gaze and Mutual Gaze – background Mutual Gaze: – Social accessibility Affiliative conflict theory (Argyle & Dean, 1965) – anxiety? – Facilitates task performance Fry and Smith (1975); Fullwood and Doherty-Sneddon (2006) Shared Gaze – Joint attention – Mutual gaze, full gaze awareness and effective communication Monk & Gale (2002) 3 Don't Look Now: The relationship between mutual gaze, task performance and staring in Second Life

Gaze and Mutual Gaze – background Investigating mutual gaze: – Argyle & Dean (1965) – Bailenson et al. (2001, 2004) Limitations… 4 Don't Look Now: The relationship between mutual gaze, task performance and staring in Second Life

Gaze 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 another’s attention is to be vulnerable to him.” (Kendon, 1967) 5 Don't Look Now: The relationship between mutual gaze, task performance and staring in Second Life

Questions of Interest 1.Does 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? 2.Does mutual gaze facilitate task performance? – What about if you’re being stared at? 6 Don't Look Now: The relationship between mutual gaze, task performance and staring in Second Life

Second Life Business, learning, socialising Adaptable to different domains – Build a task/paradigm easily and cheaply – Adapt it to answer the question you require User-friendly interface Freely available for public use Behaviourally realistic avatars – Realistic eye and body movements – Can program to act as an agent / bot  Useful for studying social interactions in a highly controlled environment 7 Don't Look Now: The relationship between mutual gaze, task performance and staring in Second Life

Eye movements in Second Life 8 Don't Look Now: The relationship between mutual gaze, task performance and staring in Second Life Using 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)

Design Instruction Giver’s View 9 Don't Look Now: The relationship between mutual gaze, task performance and staring in Second Life

Design Instruction Giver’s ViewInstruction Follower's View 10 Don't Look Now: The relationship between mutual gaze, task performance and staring in Second Life

Design Instruction Giver’s ViewInstruction Follower's View 2 conditions – Informative and Uninformative; 15 tasks in each 52 participants; 27F; mean age Don't Look Now: The relationship between mutual gaze, task performance and staring in Second Life

View of Instruction Follower 12 Don't Look Now: The relationship between mutual gaze, task performance and staring in Second Life

Results – Gaze t(21)=2.705; p< Don't Look Now: The relationship between mutual gaze, task performance and staring in Second Life No difference between absolute amounts of mutual gaze in staring and not- staring

Results – Gaze t(21)=3.417; p<.01 t(21)=2.705; p< Don't Look Now: The relationship between mutual gaze, task performance and staring in Second Life

Results – Gaze and Task Performance No difference between task performance in staring and not staring (Z = -.303, p=.71). Task performance and mutual gaze correlated in only not-staring (r s =.48 (18), p<.05).  Why does mutual gaze correlate in one but not the other? 15 Don't Look Now: The relationship between mutual gaze, task performance and staring in Second Life

Results – Gaze and Task Performance 16 Don't Look Now: The relationship between mutual gaze, task performance and staring in Second Life

Results – Distribution of non-Mutual Gaze Looking Behaviour Not-Staring Condition (This represents approximately 27% of the total trial) 17 Don't Look Now: The relationship between mutual gaze, task performance and staring in Second Life Staring Condition

Results – Distribution of non-Mutual Gaze Looking Behaviour (This represents approximately 27% of the total trial) Non-task related objects: (t(19)=3.509; p<.01) 18 Don't Look Now: The relationship between mutual gaze, task performance and staring in Second Life

Story so far Staring doesn’t maximise mutual gaze – Shows evidence of decreasing it Mutual gaze facilitates task performance – But only in not-staring Non-mutual gaze time was spent more looking at task-irrelevant objects in staring than not- staring. 19 Don't Look Now: The relationship between mutual gaze, task performance and staring in Second Life

Limitations… Staring doesn’t maximise mutual gaze, but how much looking does? Is the increased looking at task-irrelevant objects functional not social? Can we generalise to face-to-face interactions? 20 Don't Look Now: The relationship between mutual gaze, task performance and staring in Second Life

What’s Next? What is the optimum amount of looking in order to maximise mutual gaze? Is increased looking in not-staring driven by functional or social factors? What happens if the user interacts with a computer rather than a human? 21 Don't Look Now: The relationship between mutual gaze, task performance and staring in Second Life

What’s Next? Use previous paradigm – 1 person interacting with a bot/agent Include the IV agency – interacting with human or computer Systematically vary amount of looking by giver at follower Measure social perceptions of the instruction giver, gaze behaviour and task performance 22 Don't Look Now: The relationship between mutual gaze, task performance and staring in Second Life

Acknowledgments This work was supported by the ESRC and Edinburgh ‟ s Informatics Graduate School. Thanks also to the JAST, Indigo and JAMES projects for support for the overall programme. Input into this project by Jeffrey Dalton of AIAI, University of Edinburgh is gratefully acknowledged. Don't Look Now: The relationship between mutual gaze, task performance and staring in Second Life 23

References Argyle, M., & Dean, J. (1965 ). Eye-Contact, Distance and Affiliation. Sociometry 28(3 ), Bailenson, J. N., Aharoni, E., Beall, A. C., Guadagno, R. E., Dimov, A., & Blascovich, J. (2004). Comparing behavioral and self-report measures of embodied agents’ social presence in immersive virtual environments. Paper presented at the 7th Annual International Workshop on Presence Valencia, Spain. Bailenson, J. N., Blascovich, J., Beall, A. C., & Loomis, J. M. (2001 ). Equilibrium Theory revisited: Mutual gaze and personal space in virtual environments. Presence 10(6), De Kort, Y.A.W., W.A. IJsselsteijn, and K. Poels, Digital Games as Social Presence Technology: Development of the Social Presence in Gaming Questionnaire, in proceedings of the 10th International Workshop on Presence 2007, October: Barcelona, Spain. p Fry, R., & Smith, G. F. (1975). The effects of feedback and eye contact on performance of a digit- encoding task. Journal of Social Psychology, 96(1), 145–146. Fullwood, C., & Doherty-Sneddon, G. (2006). Effect of gazing at the camera during a video link on recall.. Applied Ergonomics 37, 167–175. Monk, A. F., & Gale, C. (2002). A look is worth a thousand words: Full gaze awareness in video- mediated conversation.. Discourse Processes, 33(3), Don't Look Now: The relationship between mutual gaze, task performance and staring in Second Life

Social Presence in Gaming Questionnaire Items (from de Kort et al. 2007) Psychological involvement – empathy – I felt connected to the other(s) – I found it enjoyable to be with the other(s). psychological involvement – negative feelings – The other tended to ignore me and – I felt jealous of the other. Behavioural involvement – My actions depended on the other’s actions – I paid close attention to the other. The responses were set on a 5-point intensity scale, ranging from “slightly” to “extremely” Don't Look Now: The relationship between mutual gaze, task performance and staring in Second Life 25