During collaboration, people communicate using verbal and non-verbal cues,
including gaze cues. Spoken language is usually the primary medium of
communication in these interactions, yet despite this co-occurrence of speech and
gaze cueing, most experiments have used paradigms without language. Furthermore,
previous research has shown that myriad social factors influence behaviour during
interactions, yet most studies investigating responses to gaze have been conducted in
a lab, far removed from any natural interaction. It was the aim of this thesis to
investigate the relationship between language and gaze cue utilisation in natural
collaborations. For this reason, the initial study was largely observational, allowing
for spontaneous natural language and gaze. Participants were found to rarely look at
their partners, but to do so strategically, with listeners looking more at speakers when
the latter were of higher social status. Eye movement behaviour also varied with the
type of language used in instructions, so in a second study, a more controlled (but still
real-world) paradigm was used to investigate the effect of language type on gaze
utilisation. Participants used gaze cues flexibly, by seeking and following gaze more
when the cues were accompanied by distinct featural verbal information compared to
overlapping spatial verbal information. The remaining three studies built on these
findings to investigate the relationship between language and gaze using a much more
controlled paradigm. Gaze and language cues were reduced to equivalent artificial
stimuli and the reliability of each cue was manipulated. Even in this artificial
paradigm, language was preferred when cues were equally reliable, supporting the
idea that gaze cues are supportive to language. Typical gaze cueing effects were still
found, however the size of these effects was modulated by gaze cue reliability.
Combined, the studies in this thesis show that although gaze cues may automatically
and quickly affect attention, their use in natural communication is mediated by the
form and content of concurrent spoken language.
Date of Award | 2014 |
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Original language | English |
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Supervisor | Benjamin Tatler (Supervisor), Nick Hopkins (Supervisor), Alissa Melinger (Supervisor) & Wayne Murray (Supervisor) |
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- Psychology
- Social cognition
- Social attention
- Non-verbal communication
- Eye-tracking
Gaze cues and language in communication
MacDonald, R. G. (Author). 2014
Student thesis: Doctoral Thesis › Doctor of Philosophy