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Book Review
Book Review
https://doi.org/10.1007/s41701-020-00082-0
BOOK REVIEW
Alessandro Ansani1,2
Eye-tracking research methodology has grown ceaselessly since its origins in the
late 1960s with seminal works as those by Kendon (1967), Yarbus (1967), and the
first review by Rayner (1978). Inevitably, its domains of application have broadened
accordingly: starting with a conspicuous interest in strictly computational tasks
such as reading (Rayner 1977), perception of complex objects (Yarbus 1967) and
attentional processes (Gopher 1973), from the 1970s on researchers began to engage
in other—at the time very promising—fields, more pertaining to psychology and
psycholinguistics, soon revealing fascinating applications in language production,
lexical acquisition (Tomasello and Todd 1983), learning, and joint visual attention
(Scaife and Bruner 1975). The volume Eye-tracking in Interaction, edited by Geert
Brône and Bert Oben, now emerges as the first collection of articles on the contribu-
tion of eye-tracking technology in the domain of human interaction. Its articles pro-
vide a fascinating insight into several applications, including theoretical and meth-
odological aspects.
Since the 1970s technological advances have become more and more interesting
for this domain. The extraordinary progress of optical engineering and information
sciences allowed for the development of automated and less obstructive eye-tracking
recording devices in several shapes, the most important of which being remote eye-
tracking systems, eye-tracking glasses and table-top eye-trackers (p. 7). This whole
process led to the possibility of exploring one of the most complex phenomena in
nature: human interaction, and, in particular, dyadic interactions, here convincingly
considered as a “complex dynamical system” (p. 71).
* Alessandro Ansani
alessandro.ansani@uniroma1.it
1
Department of Psychology, Sapienza University of Rome, via dei Marsi, 76, Rome 00185, Italy
2
Cosmic Lab, Department of Philosophy, Communication and Performing Arts, Roma Tre
University, via Ostiense, 234, Rome 00146, Italy
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A. Ansani
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Geert Brône and Bert Oben (Eds.): Eye‑tracking in interaction
techniques) are readily affordable for any university or research center, particularly
for departments whose primary research methodologies are not massively engineer-
ing-based. Very appropriately, Pfeiffer and Renner (p. 133) provide a short but use-
ful outlook on some cheaper eye-tracking solutions.
The third part of the book (Case studies) offers a selection of four case studies on
several topics. Chapter 9 is devoted to the underexplored multimodal approach to
turn-taking. One of its conclusions is that “the co-participant last gazed in a Turn-
Constructional Unit by the speaker has a privileged status with respect to turn-tak-
ing” (p. 218), which is an interesting insight even if further research still has to shed
light on the cases in which this privileged status seems to vanish and another co-
participant self-selects. Chapter 10 tackles the differences in gaze behavior between
lexical-gaze and gestural-gaze alignment, showing that the former is somewhat
stronger than the latter, that is “if a speaker is looking at an addressee’s face while
uttering a target word, this significantly increases the probability that the addressee
will use that same word later in the conversation. If a speaker is looking at an
addressee’s face while performing a target gesture, there is no correlation with sub-
sequent gesture production by that addressee” (p. 233; results are broadly discussed
on p. 256). Chapter 11 deepens our knowledge of deictic behavior using a mobile
dual eye-tracking paradigm in face-to-face naturally occurring interactions. Its con-
tribution is quite innovative, primarily since previous studies on deixis have mainly
been based on video-recordings, and therefore lack an entirely satisfying ecological
validity. Chapter 12 deserves great attention given its highly specific theme and its
novel approach: gaze analysis of “multimodal display of recipiency in one naturally
occurring interpreter-mediated therapeutic encounter” (p. 302), i.e. the encounter of
a Russian-speaking asylum seeker and his Dutch psychotherapist in a mental health
institution in the Netherlands. The authors manage to shed light on some interest-
ing micro-phenomena of collaboration between the interlocutors expressed by gaze
paths.
The use of eye-tracking techniques has some great potential in several research
fields, but the domain of human interaction had nevertheless not been thematized to
this extent so far. This publication fills a gap in such research by offering the reader
theoretical, methodological, and applicative perspectives in an organic fashion.
The whole book is solid and its topics are discussed at a satisfactory level of anal-
ysis. Each chapter is convincingly referenced so that the reader aiming at an even
better grasp of any of the theme-related literature can go more in depth into the tack-
led topics.
The book can by no means be regarded as an eye-tracking guide for beginners
(nor does it aim to be one). As a matter of fact, the text would chiefly be recom-
mended to intermediate users of eye-tracking techniques who already have some
basic skills of experimental methodologies and a high competence in data analysis.
Nevertheless, less-skilled users can find the reading useful as well, notably the first
part in which several theoretical frameworks are presented.
In spite of the broad variation of paradigms represented in the volume, one
tool appears to remain absent: pupillometry, i.e. the measurement of pupil size
and reactivity. This has been considered a promising research tool since the 1960s
(Hess and Polt 1964; Hess wt al. 1965) and its effects have been shown in several
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A. Ansani
Conflict of interest The author declares that this book review was written in the absence of any commercial
or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.
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Geert Brône and Bert Oben (Eds.): Eye‑tracking in interaction
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