Harnessing Gaze - Eyes for Information, Communication, and Understanding


Symposium at TeaP 2024


From observing people’s eyes, eye-tracking research has gained insight into a vast amount of perceptual and cognitive processing, thereby enhancing psychological models of human perception, cognition, and action. Harnessing gaze is of special interest when it comes to interaction. Recent developments in eye-tracking technology such as the shrinking size of eye-tracking hardware and the advancement of machine learning offer great potential for understanding human-human interaction better on the one hand and improving pervasive human-computer interaction applications on the other hand. Thus, current eye-tracking research explores novel forms of gaze interaction that rely on current psychological theories and findings, computational modeling, as well as expertise in highly promising application domains. The Symposium’s contributions work at the boundaries of gaze interaction.
Giulia Manca will showcase opportunities of recent technological developments from an applied perspective in the context of consumer behavior raising the question of which and how gaze parameters can be harnessed. Valentin Foucher presents work about harnessing gaze parameters in the context of detecting lying intentions.
In the context of human-human interaction the impact of various features of dyadic gaze dynamics on different outcome measures of interpersonal contact are explored. Eva Landmann presents evidence that shows the influence of the emotional context of the conversation on evaluating the listener’s gaze as appropriate. Further, Julian Gutzeit shows that more (subjectively perceived) mutual gaze contact is associated to increased social connectedness compared to when more gaze aversion is perceived. Mehtap Cakir will discuss parameters of mutual gaze which indicate interpersonal synchronization, especially eye blinks.

Symposium Contributions:
1. Manca, G., & Rothensee, M. Measurement of gaze using smartphones, an applied consumer research case study of social media ad perception patterns in the US.
2. Foucher, V. & Huckauf, A. How can we detect lying intentions from the eyes?
3. Landmann, E., & Böckler-Raettig, A. In the Eyes of the Listener: The interplay of gaze behavior and emotional context in conversations
4. Gutzeit, J., Hölting, L, Boller, A, & Huestegge, L. Gaze interaction and social connectedness
5. Cakir, M., Lau, W.K. & Huckauf, A. Uncovering Interpersonal Synchronization of Eye Movements during Sustained Mutual Gaze "