Exploring Gaze Dynamics: Initial Findings on the Role of Listening Bystanders in Conversational Interactions

This work-in-progress paper investigates how virtual listening bystanders influence participants’ gaze behavior and their perception of turn-taking during scripted conversations with embodied conversational agents (ECAs). 25 participants interacted with five ECAs – two speakers and three bystanders – across three conditions: no bystanders, bystanders exhibiting random gazing behavior, and social bystanders engaging in mutual gaze and backchanneling. Participants either observed the conversation or actively participated as speakers by reciting prompted sentences. The results indicated that bystanders reduced the participants’ attention to speakers, hindering their ability to anticipate turn changes and resulting in longer delays in shifting their gaze to the new speaker after an ECA yielded the turn. Random gazing bystanders were particularly noted for obscuring conversational flow. These findings underscore the challenges of designing effective and natural conversational environments, highlighting the need for careful consideration of ECA behaviors to enhance user engagement.