The role of gaze in human-human and human-robot interaction
Speaker:Maria Staudte
Institution: Saarland University
Abstract:
The function of gaze in communication is two-fold: it helps us to determine whose turn it is to speak and it gives back-channel feedback about the listener's level of comprehension and focus of attention of both interlocutors. For gaze production in HRI that appears natural to humans, we need to know how both funtions are realised separately and how they are combined. Several studies have been conducted on the process of turn-taking in face-to-face communication and on simultaneous scene (picture) and language processing. But rather little is known on the relation of gaze and focus of attention during interactive language production and understanding.
In this talk, I will first propose a design for a study motivated by previous psycholinguistic research that investigates the role of gaze in simple face-to-face communication wrt spatial organisation of objects. Secondly, I will explain how I plan to analyse the data and what the results can teach us about gaze. And eventually, I will propose a design for evaluation experiments that shall, on one hand, support the previous analyses and show that robot gaze becomes more natural and comprehensible. On the other hand, they will hopefully shed light onto methods of dealing with misunderstandings and confusion arising from conflicting gaze and speech.