Does User's Prior Knowledge Worth Consideration?: The Influence of Prior Knowledge Toward Mutual Gaze Convergence

Abstract

To design a user-centered adaptive system, especially in human-system interaction or interactive system, human factors are the essential keys to achieve effectiveness. Many studies investigate and mainly focus on users' behaviors toward systems. However, the investigation on internal state factors, which influence the users' behaviors is still limited. In this study, we aim to provide the evidence that indicates the influence of an internal state, namely prior knowledge. We investigated the effect of prior knowledge towards mutual gaze convergence between 2 individuals in a lecture task. The results reveal that the interaction of lecturer-student with prior knowledge shows significantly higher percentage of mutual gaze convergence with longer duration than the interaction of lecturer-student with no prior knowledge. The findings provide evidences that prior knowledge has direct effect on individual's gaze behaviors, which is applicable for designing user-centered adaptive systems. It suggests that one-for-all approach is not optimal. The systems that require users' attentiveness, should be adaptive with different internal states. The target group or level of prior knowledge in each individual should be taken into the account to draw and maintain users' attention and to smoothen the interaction in order to increase the success in interaction and to achieve efficient and user-centered adaptive systems.