From monitoring to sharing of attention in dyadic interaction : The affordances of gaze data to better understand social aspects of remote collaborative problem solving

Abstract

This paper aims to better understand the social aspects of collaborative problem solving (CPS) through studying joint attention behaviour (JAB) in an online game–like environment. To capture these behaviours and exemplify how ‘jointness’ is achieved in CPS in remote dyadic interaction, event-related measures are utilised based on the following multiple interaction data: (1) individuals’ gaze data from CPS task completion and (2) automatically generated log files (i.e. chats and actions) from dyadic interactions. The results give empirical evidence of the detached, individualistic attention experiences (i.e. monitoring and common attention) and of bidirectional relations (i.e. mutual and shared attention) in which partners adopt an engaged approach towards one another to solve the task together. It is also observed how lower level attention in CPS can be a precursor to a higher level; that is, during interaction, there is a move from monitoring the partner’s actions towards common attention experience. In addition, it is noticed that richer second-person relations may come in degrees. In methodological terms, the gaze data can provide access to better uncover dyadic processes during remote CPS, but without the information embedded in the log data, they would not provide sufficient contextual details of the real interaction to fully understand social connotations related to CPS.