Document Type
Journal Article
Publication Title
Scientific Reports
Publisher
Nature Publishing Group
Place of Publication
United Kingdom
School
School of Arts and Humanities
RAS ID
26782
Abstract
We report the personal eye gaze patterns of people engaged in face-to-face getting acquainted conversation. Considerable differences between individuals are underscored by a stability of eye gaze patterns within individuals. Results suggest the existence of an eye-mouth gaze continuum. This continuum includes some people showing a strong preference for eye gaze, some with a strong preference for mouth gaze, and others distributing their gaze between the eyes and mouth to varying extents. Additionally, we found evidence of within-participant consistency not just for location preference but also for the duration of fixations upon the eye and mouth regions. We also estimate that during a 4-minute getting acquainted conversation mutual face gaze constitutes about 60% of conversation that occurs via typically brief instances of 2.2 seconds. Mutual eye contact ranged from 0-45% of conversation, via very brief instances. This was despite participants subjectively perceiving eye contact occurring for about 70% of conversation. We argue that the subjective perception of eye contact is a product of mutual face gaze instead of actual mutual eye contact. We also outline the fast activity of gaze movements upon various locations both on and off face during a typical face-to-face conversation.
DOI
10.1038/s41598-018-22726-7
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.
Comments
Rogers, S. L., Speelman, C. P., Guidetti, O., & Longmuir, M. (2018). Using dual eye tracking to uncover personal gaze patterns during social interaction. Scientific reports, 8(1), 4271. Available here.