Why research on gaze in social interaction needs mobile eye tracking
Elisabeth Zima, Peter L. Auer, Christoph Rühlemann · Pragmatics & beyond. New series · 2025
Abstract This chapter challenges the prevailing practice in ethnomethodologically inspired interaction research (EMCA) of recording and analyzing gaze in social interactions from an observer’s perspective. Contrary to the assumption that this perspective is ‘natural’, we demonstrate systematic divergence between analysts’ and participants’ viewpoints and argue that ‘the standard procedure’ of video recording does not allow for a reliable reconstruction of when interactants look to or away from each other in a considerable number of cases. Three intercoder reliability studies, comparing the transcription of mutual gaze in triadic interactions from an observer’s perspective with eye tracking data, support this argument. They reveal the inherent limitations of gaze coding from an observer’s perspective, while showing that gaze transcription based on eye tracking data, which captures the participants’ perspective, is much less error-prone. It minimizes the need to infer gaze targets from ambiguous bodily cues and thus emerges as the preferred method for accurately reconstructing mutual gaze as part of interactional sense-making.