Contribution
How noise impacts gaze patterns related to turn-taking behavior during face-to-face communication
* Presenting author
Abstract:
In face-to-face conversations, gaze plays a crucial role in sending and receiving visual cues that aid speech understanding and facilitate turn-taking. Listeners typically direct their gaze toward the current speaker and use it to help transition to the next speaker. However, how these gaze patterns adapt for turn-taking in challenging acoustic environments remains unclear. Here, we asked ten groups of three young, normal-hearing Danish participants to engage in six discussions on various topics, each lasting approximately seven minutes. During these conversations, we recorded their eye movements using wearable eye-tracking glasses. We manipulated conversation difficulty by introducing two levels of background noise (8-talker babble), with each group participating in three noisy and three quiet conversations. Our findings showed that participants directed more gaze towards their conversation partners in noisy environments and exhibited increased gaze movements. Furthermore, gaze was more aligned with and predictive of turn-taking behavior in noisy settings, with both listeners and speakers increasing their gaze at the next speaker at the end of a turn. Overall, acoustic challenges imposed by noise significantly influenced gaze behavior, suggesting an increased reliance on visual information to manage turn-taking and understand speech.