Difference in Eye Gaze for Floor Apportionment in Native- and Second-Language Conversations

Abstract

In face-to-face communication, eye gaze is known to play various roles such as managing the attention of interlocutors, expressing intimacy, exercising social control, highlighting particular speech content, and coordinating floor apportionment. For second language (L2) communication, one’s perception of eye gaze is expected to have more importance than for native language (L1) because eye gaze is assumed to partially compensate for the deficiencies of verbal expressions. This paper examines and clarifies the efficiency of the function of eye gaze in the coordination of floor apportionment through quantitative analyses of eye gaze during three-party conversations in L1 and L2. Specifically, the authors conducted ANOVA tests on the eye-gaze statistics of a speaker and two listeners during utterances while focusing on whether floor-switch occurs subsequent to the utterance. The analysis results show that the listener who is gazed at more by the speaker is more likely to be the next speaker with a higher probability in L2 than in L1 conversations. Meanwhile, the listeners gaze more at the speaker in L2 than in L1 conversation for both the utterances just before a floor switch and cases with no floor switch. These results support the observation that the eye gaze of the speaker is efficient for floor apportionment in L2 conversations and suggest that longer listeners’ eye gazes in L2 conversations also function efficiently in smooth floor apportionment.

The Role of Eye Gaze in Regulating Turn Taking in Conversations: A Systematized Review of Methods and Findings

“…All 29 studies used video recording to capture eye gaze during conversation, however nine did not specify how many cameras were used (Beattie, 1978 , 1979 ; Rutter et al, 1978 ; Goodwin, 1980 ; Harrigan, 1985 ; Egbert, 1996 ; Lerner, 2003 ; Park, 2015 ; Blythe et al, 2018 ). Seven studies used one camera for each participant (Lamb, 1981 ; Bavelas et al, 2002 ; Eberhard and Nicholson, 2010 ; Cummins, 2012 ; Ho et al, 2015 ; Holler and Kendrick, 2015 ; Ijuin et al, 2018 ), three studies used one camera for the whole group interaction (Kendon, 1967 ; Harrigan and Steffen, 1983 ; Streeck, 2014 ), seven studies video recorded both each participant plus the whole group interaction (Kalma, 1992 ; Novick et al, 1996 ; Brône et al, 2017 ; Kendrick and Holler, 2017 ; Auer, 2018 ; Weiss, 2018 ; Zima et al, 2019 ), two studies only video recorded two out of three participants and eye tracked the third participant (Jokinen et al, 2009 , 2013 ), one study used two cameras to capture interactions in Italian language and only one camera to capture interactions in Tzeltal and Yeli Dnye languages Rossano et al ( 2009 ). Eleven studies used camera-based eye tracking technology ( Table 4 ), which permits investigators to measure participant's visual behavior by detecting and tracking movement of different parts of the eye (see review: Morimoto and Mimica, 2005 ).…”

“…One study (Ijuin et al, 2018 ) used gaze ratio to measure the role of eye gaze in conversation, with the other 28 studies using gaze direction ( Table 5 ). Even so, the studies largely failed to define the key variable “gaze” or defined it very vaguely ( Table 5 ).…”

“…Ijuin et al ( 2018 ), examined the role of eye gaze in relation to turn taking within groups of three native or non-native language speakers. This is the only study that looked at the amount of time spent gazing, rather than gaze shift patterns, to predict turn taking.…”

“…They found that speakers in both native and non-native speaking groups tend to look more at the person who is likely to be the next speaker than at the observing listener, in both floor- switching and floor-holding conditions. Furthermore, speakers in both language groups looked at the next speaker more in floor-switching than floor-holding conditions (Ijuin et al, 2018 ), suggesting that gazing ratio between three conversation partners can be used to predict the next speaker.…”

Comparison of Effect of Speaker's Eye Gaze on Selection of Next Speaker between Native- and Second-Language Conversations

“…The experimental results show that the averages of speaker's gazing ratios are almost the same in four kinds of conversations (two different conversation topics and two different conversation languages), whereas the averages of listener's gazing ratios are larger in L2 conversations than in L1 conversations for both conversation topics. Ijuin et al [18], [19] classified three interlocutors into current speaker, next speaker, and other participant (not next speaker) by observing the transition of speaker in the conversation and, furthermore, compared the speaker's gaze activities in L1 and L2 from the perspective of conversational interaction. The analysis revealed two key points: (1) the speaker gazes at the interlocutor who is to be the next speaker more in L2 than in L1 conversations, whereas the averages of speakers' gazing ratios are almost the same in both L1 and L2 conversations; (2) not only the next speaker but also the other participant, who is not gazed at so much by the current speaker, gazes at the current speaker more in L2 conversations.…”