Going to the zoo: The role of gaze and other non-verbal behavior in task-based interactions

This paper reports on an investigation of gaze patterns and other non-verbal behavior in dyadic, problem-solving based interactions. In a planning activity, participants are given an instruction sheet and a physical map of a zoo. Both participants must coordinate their actions to find a common solution to the problem. This paper aims at examining how activity-based interactions vary from other interactions, such as everyday conversation and story-telling (Goodwin 1980; Bavelas et al. 2002, 2007). The findings of this paper suggest that participants’ non-verbal behavior, such as smiling, nodding and in particular gaze, varies according to the interactional organization. In egalitarian interactions gaze directed at the other person occurs together with meta-task utterances, for example personal and humorous remarks. This paper highlights the role of gaze in task-based interactions to show that gaze is an integral part of stance taking, as it enables participants to position themselves in a joint activity.