Download studies - Roma Tre

Communicative Functions of Eye
Closing Behaviors
Laura Vincze¹, Isabella Poggi¹
¹Dipartimento di Scienze dell’Educazione
Università Roma Tre , 53 Manin str, 00185 Rome, Italy
Abstract: In this work we present a typology of eye closing behaviours based on a
semantic taxonomy of communicative signals. The types of eye closing we
investigate are blinks, eye-closures and winks performed during political debates.
While other studies in the literature attempt to classify blinks and eye-closures
according to their duration or (in)completeness of the closure, our study aims to
distinguish between communicative and non communicative types of eye closing,
and among the former category, between different meanings possibly conveyed by
closing one’s eyes. Our goal is to prove that while winks are always
communicative, i.e. they bear a meaning, also blinks and eye-closure may have a
communicative value. To the analysis of eye closing types we applied both an
observational and a Speaker’s judgement approach and classified them on the
basis of a semantic taxonomy according to which each communicative signal can
convey information on the World, on the Sender’s mind and on the Sender’s
Identity.
Keywords: Eye-closure, blink, wink, gaze, facial expression, multimodal
communication.
1 Gaze studies
Numerous studies have been devoted to eye communication: gaze has been investigated
in many of its social and communicative functions ([1]; [2]) mainly in connection with
greeting and flirting behaviour ([3]; [4]), conversational manoeuvres like turn-taking
([5], [6]) and backchannel ([7], [8]). Eyebrows also received attention: [9], [10] and [11]
studied eyebrows behaviour as an emotional, syntactic and conversational signal.
Other scholars instead ([12]; [13]) hypothesized the existence of a lexicon of gaze,
where to each communicative signal a specific meaning corresponds. [13] investigated
the behaviours of the eye region (eyebrows, eyelids, eyes, eye sockets) to find the
communicative signals that gaze can produce, showing that communicative signals may
be decomposed into minimal units, comparable to the phonemes, distinctive features, or
even morphemes of verbal languages, which according to how they are combined, result
in changes in meaning. Studies about specific aspects of gaze, like eyelids positions
[14], highlighted the semantic richness of gaze, which can convey information even on
the surrounding world (by pointing, or ‘mimicking’ some concrete or abstract qualities,
like ‘huge’, ‘subtle’, ‘difficult’) and express sophisticated metadiscursive information
(by a total eye closure, meaning that some topic can be passed over).
Multimodal researchers’ interest was attracted also by eye-closing behaviour,
especially blinks. Blinks have been studied in face to face interactions in relation to gaze
direction before and after eye closure [15] or during cognitive tasks such as reading,
memorizing or even lying [16; 17].
On the basis of previous research according to which during tasks requiring higher
cognitive load subjects’ blink rate tended to decrease, [17] tested the hypothesis that
also during lying, more cognitively demanding than truth telling [18; 19], subjects’
blinks will decrease while a lie is told, followed by an increase in blinking rate
immediately after. The experiments conducted confirmed the hypothesis: liars displayed
a reduction in blink rate during the target period (i.e. during the lie-telling), followed by
an increase in blink rate after the lie was told, increase explained in terms of the
compensatory effect. The same results are attested by [20] who conducted analyses of
suspects’ blink rates in high-stakes contexts such as police interviews. Again, suspects
showed a decrease in eye-blink while lying, contradicting expectations such as an
increase in blinking rate due to anxiety.
Also [16] investigated the relationship between deception and blinking. The aim of
their research was to strengthen the theoretical base of the Concealed Information Test
by using the startle eye blink. The Concealed Information Test is one of the main
polygraphs or ‘lie-detector’ tests used for the detection of deception. By analyzing the
subjects’ physiological responses to crime-related questions as compared to several
incorrect control questions, the assumption is that the guilty subjects will show stronger
reactivity to the crime-related questions instead of the control ones. In line with the
Concealed Information Test, [16] predicted enhanced physiological reactions (heart rate
change, skin conductance, respiration line length and startle blink) to crime pictures in
comparison to control pictures. Their hypotheses were only partly confirmed in that
indeed physiological reactions augmented in the entire body except for the startle blink,
which decreased. This is in line with [17] results that when lying subjects tend to
manifest a decrease in blink rate.
A very plausible alternative explanation to the reduced blink rate when lying could
be the one advanced by [15]: people tend to blink less not as an effect of high cognitive
activity, but due to the necessity of keeping one’s eyes as open as possible. When
performing highly risky activities, such as lying, the need to always ‘keep an eye’ on the
interlocutor and observe his reactions, becomes more acute. The need of total focus on
the activity performed is, according to [15], also the explanation of the reduced blink
rate in surgeons while performing surgery.
Confronted with a large literature concerned with blinks study in experimental
settings where subjects were required to gaze at fixed targets or were involved in
reading activities or performed surgeries, [15] emphasizes the importance of studying
blinks in face to face communication instead. Due to the enormous contribution of the
entire body in the communication through emphasizing certain meanings conveyed
verbally or adding new ones, we assume, in line with Cummins’ considerations, that
blinks “might bear a richer relationship to spoken communication than has been
previously been recognized” ([15]: 2). His study is an attempt to find patterns in
blinking behaviour among subjects involved in conversational contexts. Although
blinking style is a highly independent behaviour, affirming, on the basis of his results,
that “the most common blink is a short blink with unperturbed gaze while both
participants are looking directly at each other” ([15]: 4) is not hasty generalization.
In our research on blinks we were more concerned in a possible classification of
blinks in terms of their communicative and non-communicative functions and, for the
former, of the meanings that can be conveyed through an eye-closure. In a previous
paper we proposed a semantic classification of two eye-closing behaviours: blinks and
eye-closure [21]. To further detail and specify the lexicon of gaze [13] here we overview
that study and, to complete the picture, we further examine the unilateral eye closing
type called wink.
2 Three types of eye closing as communicative behavior
Our hypothesis is that in some cases the closing of the eyes (blinks, winks and eye-
closure) during speech can be analyzed as a communicative behaviour. So, whenever we
state an item of eye closing is communicative, therefore by definition meaningful, we
must analyze both its signal and its meaning.
On the signal side, we distinguish three types of possible eye closing: blink, eyeclosure and wink, describing each in terms of the values it assumes as to a set of relevant
parameters. To identify parameters, we started from those proposed for the analysis of
gesture ([22], [13], [23]) – amplitude, velocity, tension, duration – and assuming they
can be applied to any body movement, including those of the head [24] and of the eye
region, we chose the following parameters with their values; eyelid tension (tense,
default, relaxed); velocity (fast, default, slow); duration (long, default, brief); repetition
(0, 2, n); bi / unilateralism of the eye closing (left, right, both). To be relevant, a
parameter and its values must contribute to differentiate at least two items otherwise
similar in all respects. These parameters help us distinguish three different types of eye
closing, blink, wink and eye-closure, and within each, communicative vs. noncommunicative items. By blink we mean, following [25], a quick closing of the eyes and
return to eyes open, by eye-closure an eye closing longer than a blink, further sometimes
characterized by a higher tension in the eyelids, while by wink we refer to a unilateral
lowering of the upper lid.
3 Parameters’ roles in differentiating eye closing types
All three signals share a common feature, complete eye(s) closing, but they differ in at
least four major features: repetition, duration, tension and bilateralism of the closing.
The parameter repetition distinguishes blinks from the other types of eye closing, blinks
being the only repeated ones.
Duration makes the difference between blinks and eye-closure: blinks are brief,
while eye-closure items are longer than a blink. Duration has no influence on winks
instead: even if we try to vary this parameter, which in blinks and eye-closures leads to
crucial differences in the signal, it is not so in what winks are concerned. [25] in their
system of facial coding advise to code as unilateral eye-closure a wink longer than 2
seconds, but this in our view does not affect either the signal or the meaning: a wink
different in duration is still a wink.
Another characterizing feature of the wink is, according to the above authors,
hesitation during closure, even though the closure may be very brief. Hesitation in winks
cannot be considered a parameter, as for instance unilateralism, because the difference
between a hesitant and a non-hesitant wink is not relevant. While the unilateral closure is
intentional, hence communicative, the hesitation in closure is not: it may be simply due
to lack of training in unilateral blinks (as they are considerably less frequent than
blinks). Thus the only distinctive parameter applying to winks is bilateralism: only
winks are unilaterally performed, by either right or left eye, while blinks and eye-closure
are bilateral.
Finally, tension may be a characterizing feature of both eye-closure and winks, but
definitely not of blinks, as the parameter of tension is connected to duration. By
definition a blink – a quick eye-closure and return to eyes open – is so fast that it cannot
involve tension. If one has the time to press the upper eyelid against the lower one, it is
not a blink anymore, but an eye-closure. So whatever bilateral eye closing is long and
tense, is an eye-closure. As we shall see later, the parameters of tension and duration
have an important role in conveying the meaning of being categorical in what we are
stating, therefore intensifying the degree of certainty in what we say or in what we hear.
4
Parameters’ roles in differentiating communicative from non
communicative items
Parameters also allow to distinguish communicative from non-communicative types of
eye closing.
4.1 Communicative vs. non-communicative blinks
Here the relevant parameter is repetition: a physiological blink, i.e., one simply aimed at
keeping the standard humidity of the eye, is single, while the communicative one is
generally faster and repeated. Repetition is, in general, a necessary condition to consider
the blink communicative, but it is not sufficient to interpret it as meaningful, since due to
idiosyncratic differences, some people tend to blink more frequently than others.
4.2 Communicative vs. non-communicative eye-closure
To distinguish between communicative and non-communicative eye-closure, duration
and eyelid pressure may be significant parameters: a communicative eye-closure is
longer than a blink but considerably shorter than while sleeping, and possibly with the
upper eyelid pressed against the lower one. During emphatic eye-closure, the eyebrows
may be raised as well, causing a tightening of the upper eyelid. As specified above,
pressure may be a relevant parameter in distinguishing communicative from non
communicative eye-closure, as in non communicative eye-closures (while sleeping) the
eyelids are lax, while in communicative ones they are possibly tensed. Also the context
is relevant: in a debate it is much less likely (if not impossible) for a non-communicative
eye-closure to appear, while in a relaxed, familiar situation this may sometimes occur.
4.3 Communicative vs. non communicative winks
While blinks and eye-closures can be either communicative or non-communicative,
winks are probably always communicative: due to the un-natural unilateralism of the
wink, intentionality seems necessary in its performance.
As winks are unilateral, they attract our attention for their discontinuity as compared
to blinks. By choosing to close only one eye instead of two, the sender of the wink
intentionally chooses to send a visual signal to the addressee. This signal is highly
intentional, aimed at attracting attention, but not anybody’s attention: they are directed
to a particular person, the addressee, and only to him; sometimes you perform the wink
only after making sure that no one else (or at least not the one you do not want to
understand) sees you That’s why we say that winks are, in the same time, overt and
covert, open and hidden communicative signals: overt because highly peculiar and
therefore aimed at breaking the continuity of blinks, and covert, hidden, because furtive,
performed while only the others are not looking. Winks express therefore a sort of
complicity with the addressee, while alluding in a non-conspicuous manner (i.e., not so
noticeable by bystanders) to something that should be the object of attention only to
Sender and Addressee.
5 Method
To collect and analyze cases of eye closing, we adopted both self-generated examples
and corpus analysis. The former is the method of the Speaker’s judgements: given a
body behaviour, you wonder if it is simply practical action or it is a signal conveying
some meaning, what does it mean, if it is ambiguous, if its meaning is acceptable in one
or another context, how could it be paraphrased in a verbal language, which other items
in the same or other modalities may be synonyms of it. The latter is the observational
method implying analysis of video-recorded corpora of political discourse.
Our corpus includes six debates and an interview. The debates are taken from “Canal
9”, a corpus of roughly 40 minutes each, held between 2004 and 2006 at Canal 9, a TV
Emitter in the Canton Valais, collected by the IDIAP Research Institute of Martigny
(Switzerland) and publicly available on the web portal of the SSPNet (Social Signal
Processing Network of Excellence, http://sspnet.eu/). ([26]). The last item of our corpus
is a pre-electoral interview, held in May 2007 in the studios of France 2, interview
having as guest the Socialist party’s representative: Ségolène Royal, Nicolas Sarkozy’s
counter-candidate to the French presidential elections.
To analyze eye behaviours during debates we adopted an annotation scheme (see
Table 1), where each item is described both in terms of its signal and its meaning. In
column 1 we write the time in the video of the behaviour under analysis; columns 2 and
3 contain a description, respectively, of the verbal and nonverbal behaviour; and col. 4
the non-communicative goal or the meaning of the communicative or noncommunicative behaviours in columns 2 and / or 3, phrased as a sentence in the first
person. Further, since a communicative action besides its direct goal may aim at one or
more supergoals, that is, to indirectly convey some information to be inferred by the
Addressee – other goals for which the direct goal is a means – in col. 5 we write the
possible supergoal of the actions in column 3. Finally, In column 6 we classify the goal
of column 4 (or the supergoal written in column 5, when there is one) in terms of a
taxonomy of meanings (see Sect. 6.2.).
Table 1 contains the detailed analysis of one item of communicative eye-closure and
one of communicative wink. In the first instance the sender of the signal, Mr. Chevrier,
involved in a debate about reforming the Disability Insurance or not, while trying to
assure the audience that there is no intention whatsoever to dismantle the Insurance,
shakes head and presses the upper eyelid against the lower one, communicating his
being categorical while stating this. The head shake here is an intensifier of totality; it
means total absence of dismantling intentions.
The second item is an instance of a communicative wink performed by Ségolène
Royal, the leftist candidate running for President of France. While speaking, in absence
of the counter-candidate Nicolas Sarkozy, about the difficulties poor people are subject
to, and about rich people’s abuses, Royal frowns, squints eyes in a disagreeing grimace
and performs a wink with the right eye. This may be interpreted as an allusive warning:
she wants to attract the electors’ attention on the mischief done by Sarkozy and the rich
people he favours, but without uttering his name explicitly.
6 Types of eye closing
Within our corpus we singled out five categories of eye closing, grouped below on the
basis of their meaning (or non-meaning). We first list the non-communicative blink and
eye-closure items, then the communicative items of blink, eye-closure and wink.
6.1 Non communicative eye closing
As mentioned, only the blink and the eye-closure may be non-communicative, while the
wink is necessarily communicative.
Non communicative blinks
There are three types of non-communicative blinks ([21]):
1. the “physiological” blink, that merely fulfils the physiological need of keeping a
standard level of eye humidity.
2. the blink of a stuttering person. When a person has a problem in pronouncing a word,
he may blink twice when engaging in the production of that word, while repeating its
first syllable. This type of blink is not communicative, even if it somehow “helps” the
stutterer to communicate
3. the startle blink [27]. Supposing the startle is real and not acted, this type of blink,
even though repeated, is not communicative, in that the Sender does not want to
communicate his startle reaction to the others.
Non communicative eye closure
As far as eye-closures are concerned instead, [21] distinguish three cases of non
communicative eye-closures:
1. one occurring while sleeping (which obviously cannot be found in a debate, at least
on the part of the debaters, while it might occur in a bored spectator).
2. eye-closure while laughing. Sometimes, while laughing, one closes eyes for a longer
duration than a blink.
3. eyes closed while thinking. While concentrating we often close our eyes for a few
seconds, to isolate ourselves out of the surrounding space: this is the cut off, a type of
eye-closure which can transmit information on the cognitive processes of the Sender
[28]. This eye behaviour is not strictly communicative, in that it can be displayed
exclusively to help the process of thought. Although by seeing us close our eyes our
interlocutor can infer we are thinking, this doesn’t mean that we intended to
communicate this to him. If instead we choose to display our eye closing in order to let
the other know we are concentrating (and maybe don’t want to be disturbed); this is
indeed a communicative eye-closure.
6.2 Communicative eye closing
If identified in the corpus, the communicative items of eye closing were classified as to
their meaning. According to [13], [29], any communicative signal – words, sentences,
prosody, gestures, therefore also an eye closing – conveys one of three basic kinds of
information: about the World, the Sender’s Identity, or the Sender’s Mind. Information
on the World concerns the concrete and abstract entities and events of the world outside
the speaker (objects, persons, organisms, events, their place and time); Information on
the Speaker’s Identity concerns his/her age, sex, personality, cultural roots; while
Information on the Speaker’s Mind concerns the Speaker’s mental states: his/her goals,
beliefs and emotions referred to ongoing discourse. Let us see the types of information
borne by items of eye closure.
6.3 Eye-closure and the Sender’s Identity
Information about the Sender’s Identity concerns age, sex, personality, cultural roots of
the person making the blink or eye-closure. In the debate “Disability Insurance”, Mr.
Richoz, representing the blind persons and himself affected by a degenerative blinding
disease, while assuring the opponent (and the audience) about the disables’ efforts to
obtain a qualification, performs a frown and an eye-closure, which might paraphrased as
“I am concentrated in this effort”. Richoz’s eye-closure is somehow mimicking the
disable’s determination in trying to do their best, conveying therefore an information on
the disable’s identity. Taking into account that he himself makes part of the same
category of people, and he himself attended this training classes in order to obtain a
qualification, we can say that his eye behaviour conveys an information on his own
identity.
6.4 Eye closure and the Sender’s Mind
Among the signals bearing information on the Sender’s Mind, [29] distinguishes Belief
Markers, Goal Markers and Emotion Markers. Belief Markers inform on the Sender’s
degree of certainty, or other ongoing cognitive processes, regarding the message being
delivered, Goal Markers on the goals (the performatives) of one’s sentences or the
structure of the message, while Emotion Markers convey the emotions being felt during
or regarding the delivered discourse.
Belief Markers
The degree of certainty one attributes to the beliefs mentioned in ongoing discourse can
be conveyed not only verbally, by verbal markers such as absolutely, probably or
possibly, but also through gestures and eye behaviour. Within eye-closing, through both
rapid repeated blinks (either accompanied by nods or not) and eye-closure the
interlocutor can confirm what the speaker is saying, thus manifesting one’s certainty that
the speaker is correct in his affirmations. In comparison to the blink, the eye-closure
adds to the meaning of ‘yes’ an element of “categorical”, i.e., a high level of certainty
and possibly of commitment to what one is saying. It might then be paraphrased as
“Absolutely, I am very certain of this”.
In a previous paper, [24] proposed a classification of nods on the basis of the
meanings they convey. In the light of these new findings on blinks, we can state that the
eye-closure (especially if long in duration and with a higher tension on the lower eyelid)
if performed while nodding or while shaking head, conveys a higher degree of
convincement with respect to nodding/head shaking alone. When accompanied by a nod
or a head shake, eye-closure can be seen therefore as an intensifier of the degree of
conviction of the sender in what he is saying or hearing, like in the example of Mr.
Chevrier above, who, by his head shake accompanied by pressed eye-closure, intensifies
the absolute lack of dismantling intentions. But the meaning “categorical” can be added
by the eye-closure also to a nod, like in the following example. The Sender of the nod
accompanied by eye-closure is the listener, Mr. Richoz, who, when hearing Mr.
Delessert’s evaluation of the disable’s misfortune, shows his total agreement with him
by performing high amplitude nods and a very tensed eye-closure with eyebrows raised.
Emotion Markers
Among the emotion markers in gaze, i.e. gaze items informing about the Sender’s
emotions, typical ones are those of surprise, either really felt or only acted, and acted
desperation. Beside the typical expression like raised eyebrows and wide open eyes
[27], surprise (only acted or actually felt at a certain moment in time and now reexpressed, therefore mimicked) can be conveyed also by rapid repeated blinks. In our
corpus, the vice-mayor Feferler speaks of the surprise felt by himself and other town hall
workers when a questionnaire about their previous political activity was presented to the
inhabitants of Valais right before the elections. While pronouncing the word ‘surprise’,
he makes a series of rapid repeated blinks accompanied by raised eyebrows, as if
mimicking the surprise he felt in that particular moment when the questionnaire came
out.
Goal Markers
Goal Markers are signals that inform about the Sender’s goals concerning the discourse
he is delivering. Important subtypes of these goals – adequately conveyed also by some
types of eye-closings – are meta-discursive goals, i.e., the goals of:
1. meta-sentence goals, including the goals of signalling the beginning or the end of a
sentence or phrase (syntactic goals), and of marking the part of the sentence that
constitutes the comment – the new and important information (emphasis);
2. meta-discursive goals, marking the part of discourse which the Speaker, within the
structure of his discourse, considers important or, on the contrary, not important, so
much so that it could be passed over or left out.
A case of eye closure with a syntactic function of marking the start of a sentence, is
exploited in a case of misspelling and self-correction. Mr. Feferler is talking about a
decision made by the General Council. While quoting the numbers of votes, respectively
in favour, against and abstained, he has a moment of confusion and makes a mistake; so
as he realizes he has said “one abstention” instead of “one against”, while restarting to
correct himself, he performs a rapid eye-closure with raised eyebrows and a violent nod.
The meaning of his non verbal behaviour is ‘I correct myself and I start all over again’;
and he starts to enumerate the results of the voting once more. The eye-closure functions
in this case as a demarcation of where the Speaker stops and starts all over again.
Among meta-sentence and meta-discursive markers, some signal the main concepts
of one’s speech. One may emphasize the comment of one’s sentence by batons and
eyebrow raisings, but also by sudden widening of eye aperture or rapid repeated blinks
([21]). Rapid repeated blinks, either accompanied by raised eyebrows or not, can be
used as a punctuation mark during speech: the Speaker can perform a sequence of
several quick blinks while pronouncing an important concept, thereby signalling that
something important has just been stated and attracting the interlocutor’s attention on it.
On the opposite side stand cases in which the Speaker by an eye-closure has the goal not
to emphasize a concept, but rather, to pass it over, because it is not essential in the
structure of his present discourse. During the debate on Héliski (a service to carry skiers
on the mountains by helicopter, very contrasted by ecologists), while speaking about the
numbers of flights made for Héliski, Mr. Pouget, a helicopter pilot, mentions that their
number is not that important, and that this issue could be dealt with later. While saying
n’est pas si important (it is not that important), Pouget performs a slow eye-closure,
meaning “I am skipping this part, as I don’t consider it important for present
discussion”.
So far we have seen examples of eye closings as goal markers of the meta-sentence
and meta-discursive type. But one more type of goal markers are
3. performative markers, that inform about sentence goals: signals that make it clear the
specific performative – the communicative intention – of a sentence or other
communicative act. A wink belongs to this category, since it conveys the Sender’s goal
of addressing a specific, a one and only addressee, one with whom the Sender feels
associated with, who shares his same interests and goals. The Sender of the wink also
has the goal of performing a signal hidden to everyone else, a signal not perceived by
the other ‘camp’: that’s where the wink’s furtive, allusive characteristic comes from. In
fact, the wink may be paraphrased as: I want to communicate about this but only want to
do so in an furtive/allusive – hence covert – way.
We distinguish between two types of complicity wink: the playful complicity wink
and the warning wink. In both cases the Sender of the wink wants to convey the
affiliation to a group, a restricted group to which only himself and the addressee make
part of, while the person against whom the wink is aimed at, is the excluded. This is how
the dual nature of the wink can be explained: wink is at the same time an overt and a
hidden signal of both inclusion and exclusion. But while the playful complicity wink –
possibly accompanied by a smile – can be overt to the ‘enemy’ as well, it being a
disambiguating signal of the fact that the sender is not being serious, but kidding. When
wanting to exclude the person against whom the wink is aimed at, on the contrary, the
warning wink, because involving an element of danger, must be a hidden signal
perceived only by the confederate, in order to avoid the ‘enemy’ to interfere with their
goals. If the ‘enemy’ sees it too, all the efforts of the sender to warn the addressee are
useless. We can say therefore that while the warning wink is aimed at the addressee, the
playful wink is only indirectly aimed at him, but actually aimed at the ‘excluded’ person.
In a playful interaction, if one wants to let the other know that he is excluded from the
group, one may have the ultimate goal of attracting him back into group, after having
pointed out his failure to the other members of the group. The wink in this case is not
properly exclusive, but has an inclusive function.
Warning winks can also be overt sometimes, as in our example under analysis.
Ségolène Royal winks during a broadcasted TV interview, that her opponent, i.e. the
‘enemy’ she wants to warn the public against, is certainly watching. In these cases,
besides the warning intention, there is, we argue, precisely the goal of communicating to
the ‘enemy’ our affiliation with the group and his exclusion from it.
6.5 Eye closure and Information on the World
The third category of semantic taxonomy [13] is Information on the World. Although so
far we haven’t found in our corpus items of eye closing conveying this kind of
information, through our Speaker’s judgements method we can hypothesize cases in
which one could, through blinks, express information about the World. This happens,
for instance, as one imitates other people’s characteristics, such as for example being a
snobbish person. If we were to mimic a snobbish person, we would very likely decide to
make a series of repeated blinks with tightened eyelids, accompanied by raised
eyebrows and a lifted chin. When wanting to describe the non verbal behaviour of a
person engaged in a seduction attempt, we would probably again perform a series of
quick repeated blinks, but interrupted by brief moments of pause and gazing towards the
object of our desire, just to check if he is gazing back as well. Of course, all this eye
behaviour is driven to extreme and it could only occur in mimicking or caricaturizing
contexts, but it conveys, nonetheless, information on the people around us, therefore
information on the World.
7 Conclusions
In this paper we presented a research on eye closing behaviour and classified the
meaningful eye closing behaviours on the basis of a typology of meanings. Our aim was
to continue on the attempt of proving that different types of eyes closing behaviour can
communicate meanings. By adding the third possible type of eye closing, wink, and its
possible two meanings, we hope to have offered a complete picture of the possible types
of eye closing and their contribution to multimodal communication.
Acknowledgments. This research is supported by the Seventh Framework Program,
European Network of Excellence SSPNet (Social Signal Processing Network), Grant
Agreement Number 231287.
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Table 1. Annotation Scheme
1.Time
1). 13.01
Chevrier
(Speaker)
2. Speech
Il n’y a aucune volonté à
démanteler
3. Action
Shakes head
Gaze:
Chevrier
Eye-closure:
(Speaker)
Presses upper against
lower eyelid
Ségolène
Royal
5. Supergoal
6. Type of Eye-closing
Totality
There is no will to
dismantle
13.01
2). 51.32
4. Goal/Meaning
Head:
[…] alors qu’il y a
tellement d’abus de l’autre
côté parmi les amis du
pouvoir
(Speaker)
[…] when there are so
many abuses on the other
side among the friends of
power
Certainty
Gaze:
Frowns
I disprove of this.
Squints eyes.
I am angry.
Right eye winks.
I am your confederate
Looks down while
saying “on the other
side, among the
friends of power”
Information on the Sender’s
Mind:
I am categorical.
I refer to the
opponent’s party and I
locate it here.
Negative evaluation
of the opponent
Information on the Sender’s
Goals
I want you to
understand what I
am not saying
explicitly. I warn
you that something
wrong is going on
there: Sarkozy
favours his friends.
Information on the Sender’s
Emotions
Information on the World