Gaze interactions

In the project we explore how eye gaze is used in self and social perception. In a collaboration with Sho Tsuji and her IRCN Babylab in Tokyo, the focus is placed on social interactions between babies and their caregivers, whereas here at OIST we explore the interaction among adults.

In general, we are interested in what humans sense of themselves and others. As well as how eye gaze is used and if a reduced experimental setup, where only one modality of interaction is provided, can already lead to a satisfying form of social interaction that enables understanding others and boosts learning.

Since social interactions are complex and include different forms of self-expression and interactions with the world, such as eye gaze, gestures, and facial expressions, we will focus on only one of them – eye gaze. Meaning, that in our experiments, eye gaze is the only possibility to interact with the experimental setup, and the main data source used to control our interactive stimuli. In most of our experimental set ups we will use a computer screen to display the eye gaze of the participant themselves, or that of another person.

The data recorded from an eye tracker contains information such as gaze position and pupil size, we will vary which of these are used to control the stimuli displayed to the participants.

We will compare our results from screen mediated experiments with data from experiments where two participants will see each other face-to-face. In the face-to-face experiment, the eye tracker will only record the eye gaze data.