Contested Staring Issues and the Use of Mutual Gaze as an On-line Measure of Social Presence

Despite many of the current social presence measures relying heavily on subjective post-test questionnaires, some researchers have identified the value of using on-line, behavioural measures. Gaze, and specifically mutual gaze, is known to be related to social perceptions of an interlocutor, as well as facilitating task performance during an interaction [1, 2, 17]. Second Life allows for the investigation of task- based interaction in a highly controllable social environment, whilst simultaneously allowing measurement of eye movements (using a head-mounted eye-tracker). A paradigm for measuring eye movements of a user during interaction with an avatar or agent is presented. The potential for using this paradigm to investigate the use of mutual gaze as an on- line measure of social presence is discussed.