Eye gaze plays an important role in communication but understanding of its actual function or functions and the methods used to elucidate this have varied considerably. This systematized review was undertaken to summarize both the proposed functions of eye gaze in conversations of healthy adults and the methodological approaches employed. The eligibility criteria were restricted to a healthy adult population and excluded studies that manipulated eye gaze behavior. A total of 29 articles—quantitative, qualitative and mixed methods were returned, with a (...) wide range of methodological designs. The main areas of variability related to number of conversants, their familiarity and status, conversation topic, data collection tools—video and eye tracking—and definitions of eye gaze. The findings confirm that eye gaze facilitates turn yielding, plays a role in speech monitoring, prevents and repairs conversation breakdowns and facilitates intentional and unintentional speech interruptions. These findings were remarkably consistent given the variability in methods across the 29 articles. However, in relation to turn initiation, the results were less consistent, requiring further investigation. This review provides a starting point for future studies to make informed decisions about study methods for examining eye gaze and selecting variables of interest. (shrink)

Human diversity cannot be denied. In our everyday social interactions, we constantly experience the fact that each individual is a unique combination of characteristics with specific cultural norms, roles, personality, and mood. Efficient social interaction thus requires an adaptation of communication behaviors to each specific interlocutor that one encounters. This is especially true for non-verbal communication that is more unconscious and automatic than verbal communication. Consequently, non-verbal communication needs to be understood as a dynamic and adaptive process in the theoretical (...) modeling and study of social interactions. This perspective paper presents relevance, challenges, and future directions for the study of non-verbal adaptation in social interactions. It proposes that non-verbal adaptability is more pertinently studied as adaptation to interlocutor's inner characteristics than to interlocutor's behaviors per se, because behaviors are communication messages that individuals interpret in order to understand their interlocutors. The affiliation and control dimensions of the Interpersonal Circumplex Model are proposed as a framework to measure both the interlocutors' inner characteristics and the individuals' non-verbal responses. These measures can then be compared across different interactions to assess an actual change in behavior tailored to different interlocutors. These recommendations are proposed in the hope of generating more research on the topic of non-verbal adaptability. Indeed, after having gathered the evidence on average effects of non-verbal behaviors, the field can go further than a “one size fits all” approach, by investigating the predictors, moderators, and outcomes of non-verbal adaptation to the interlocutors' inner characteristics. (shrink)

The current study analyzes trans-cultural universalities and specificities in the recognition of status roles, dominance perception and social evaluation based on nonverbal cues. Using a novel methodology, which allowed to mask clues to ethnicity and cultural background of the agents, we compared impression of Germans, Americans and Arabs observing computer-animated interactions from the three countries. Only in the German stimulus sample the status roles could be recognized above chance level. However we found significant correlations in dominance perception across all countries. (...) Significant correlations were only found for evaluation between German observers and observers from the other two countries. Perceived dominance uniformly predicted the assignment of status-roles in all cultures. Microanalysis of movement behavior further revealed predictive value of specific nonverbal cues for dominance ratings. Results support the hypothesis of universalities in the processing of dominance cues and point to cultural specificities in evaluative responses to nonverbal behavior. (shrink)