InterSpeech 2021

Analysis of eye gaze reasons and gaze aversions during three-party conversations
(3 minutes introduction)

Carlos Toshinori Ishi (RIKEN, Japan), Taiken Shintani (RIKEN, Japan)
The background of this study is the generation of natural gaze behaviors in human-robot multimodal interaction. For that purpose, in this study we analyzed gaze behaviors of multiple speakers in a dataset containing three-party conversations, in terms of the reasons/intentions of their gaze events. Analyses of the gaze reasons were conducted separately for the gaze behaviors towards a dialogue partner, and for gaze aversions (i.e., gazing away from a person’s face). Analysis on the eyeball movements during gaze aversions was also conducted. Different distributions for average durations and gaze direction patterns were observed depending on the gaze reasons (e.g., in listening mode, speaking mode, towards dialogue partner’s reactions, in gaze aversions during thinking and remembering, and during the speaker’s own behaviors like nodding and laughing).