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Exploiting Listener Gaze to Improve Situated Communication in Dynamic Virtual Environments
Konstantina Garoufi1, Maria Staudte2, Alexander Koller3
1HERE Berlin. konstantina.garoufi@here.com.
Cognitive Science
|October 17, 2015
Summary
Speakers can use listener gaze to boost communication. Listener gaze reliably indicates understanding in real-time, enabling systems to adapt and improve task success in virtual environments.
Area of Science:
- Cognitive Science
- Human-Computer Interaction
- Natural Language Processing
Background:
- Gaze behavior in communication is often observed but its functional role is debated.
- Previous research suggests gaze might be an active part of the communicative signal.
- Understanding how gaze influences communication is crucial for developing interactive systems.
Purpose of the Study:
- To investigate if speakers can leverage listener gaze to enhance communicative success.
- To determine if listener gaze serves as a reliable real-time indicator of comprehension.
- To assess the impact of gaze-contingent feedback on task performance in a virtual environment.
Main Methods:
- Utilized a virtual environment where participants followed computer-generated instructions.
- Monitored listener gaze as a real-time index of understanding during instruction following.
- Developed and compared a language generation system using gaze feedback against baseline systems.
Main Results:
- Listener gaze was confirmed as a reliable real-time indicator of understanding, even in complex, dynamic settings.
- A language generation system incorporating listener gaze feedback significantly improved overall task performance.
- Systems without gaze feedback showed comparatively lower task success rates.
Conclusions:
- Listener gaze is a valuable signal that can be exploited to improve situated communication.
- Real-time gaze analysis offers a powerful tool for developing adaptive and responsive interactive systems.
- Findings pave the way for novel methods in developing and evaluating multi-modal situated interaction models.
Keywords:
Eye-trackingListener gazeReferential understandingSituated communicationVirtual environmentsMore Related Videos
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