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ORIGINAL RESEARCH article

Front. Psychol.
Sec. Psychology of Language
Volume 15 - 2024 | doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2024.1461123
This article is part of the Research Topic Stance-Taking in Embodied and Virtual Interaction View all 9 articles

Mobile Stance-Taking in Nature: An Exploration of Gaze Patterns during Assessments of Objects in Nature

Provisionally accepted
Barbara Laner Barbara Laner *
  • University of Freiburg, Freiburg, Germany

The final, formatted version of the article will be published soon.

    In this paper, I will examine the interactional dynamics of walkers assessing entities in nature, focusing on gaze behavior during these sequences. Using a combined quantitative and qualitative approach, the research identifies gaze patterns in 127 sequences and highlights the role of bodilyvisual practices. Contrary to existing literature, findings indicate that mutual gaze in this setting is not used to mark affiliation, but only occurs during strong disagreements on assessments. During agreements, walkers maintain a triangular position, both gazing at the assessable object without looking at each other. Thus, gazing at each other is not part of assessment sequences in this context and only becomes important for other reasons, as the study will show. The analysis is based on a corpus of 12 pairs that walked through the Black Forest National Park and wore mobile eye-tracking glasses to record their gaze behavior, as well as verbal practices.

    Keywords: Assessments, Stance-taking, Affective stances, gaze, Preference organization, walking and talking, Mobile interactions

    Received: 07 Jul 2024; Accepted: 02 Dec 2024.

    Copyright: © 2024 Laner. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

    * Correspondence: Barbara Laner, University of Freiburg, Freiburg, Germany

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