Abstract
In natural conversation, the minimal gaps and overlaps of the turns at talk indicate an accurate regulation of the timings of the turn-taking system. Here we studied how the turn-taking affects the gaze of a non-involved viewer of a two-person conversation. The subjects were presented with a video of a conversation while their eye gaze was tracked with an infrared camera. As a control, the video was presented without sound and the sound with still image of the speakers. Turns at talk directed the gaze behaviour of the viewers; the gaze followed, rather than predicted, the speakership change around the turn transition. Both visual and auditory cues presented alone also induced gaze shifts towards the speaking person, although significantly less and later than when the cues of both modalities were available. These results show that the organization of turn-taking has a strong influence on the gaze patterns of even non-involved viewers of the conversation, and that visual and auditory cues are in part redundant in guiding the viewers’ gaze.
Highlights
Behind the apparent ease of conversation, whether a formal or a more casual one, lies a tight organization of speaking turns [1]
Motor-cortex oscillations entrained to the syllable rhythm have been proposed to enable the fine-tuning of the timing of speakership change [4,5]
The subjects’ gaze was in the regions of interest (ROIs) for on average 92% of the video duration; 40% of the gazes were directed to ROI 1 and 52% to the ROI 2, whereas only 3% of the gazes landed outside the ROIs and 5% of the data were missing
Summary
Behind the apparent ease of conversation, whether a formal or a more casual one, lies a tight organization of speaking turns [1]. The coordinated turn-taking system enables the fluency and continuity of natural conversation and entails regulation of the timings of turns at talk. Over different languages and cultures, the conversation participants share an ability to exchange the speakership in tens of milliseconds and, for most of the time, without overlaps [2]. The conversation participants have to predict when the previous speaker is going to finish her turn of talk [4]. The generic structure of turn-taking that defines the opportunities for turn transition has been suggested to guide the conversation participants in this prediction [1]. Motor-cortex oscillations entrained to the syllable rhythm have been proposed to enable the fine-tuning of the timing of speakership change [4,5]
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