Gazing in triads: A powerful signal in floor apportionment

This article deals with three experiments which revealed a special gazing pattern at the end of a speaker's turn in three‐person groups. This gazing pattern appears to perform a definite function with regard to turn taking. In the first experiment a fine‐grained, etho‐logically oriented description was obtained of the non‐verbal behaviour of 120 adult male subjects who participated in triadic discussion groups. Using sequential analysis, distinctive non‐verbal behaviour patterns were found. In addition we looked for differences between the non‐verbal behaviour of subjects who were the emergent leaders in their group and subjects who had the lowest position of influence. One of the most interesting differences is that leaders were more likely to show a ‘prolonged gaze’ pattern at the end of an utterance, as if inviting someone else to take the floor. In the second experiment the ‘prolonged gaze’ was defined more precisely. In this experiment the position of influence of 30 male subjects was manipulated by assigning roles in three‐person groups. It appeared that appointed leaders were more likely to show the ‘prolonged gaze’ pattern than persons who were not appointed leaders. In the third experiment the behaviour of 23 triads engaged in free discussions was registered. In order to obtain more general results both male and female groups were used. The ‘prolonged gaze’ was constructed from its observed component parts by a computer. Floor switches during three hours of triadic discussions showed that the person who displayed a ‘prolonged gaze’ would yield the floor, and that the receiver of the gaze was the most likely to take the floor. Therefore, the ‘prolonged gaze’ can be considered as a powerful yielding signal in turn taking.