Gaze from and toward the silent third participant in a triadic conversation

Abstract

This study reports an analysis of the relationship between gaze and floor apportionment in a triadic conversation, focusing on the gazes from and toward the silent third participant, in other words, the participant who was not involved in the speaker change. Based on the previous observations that mutual gazes between the current and the next speaker do play an important role in coordinating floor apportionment, we analyzed the relationship between gaze and floor apportionment focusing on the silent third participant. The result suggests that the mutual gazes between the next speaker and the silent third participants had little relation to speech turn organization.