The timing of Looks in dyadic conversation

Kendon (1967) suggested that Looking serves a number of functions, one of which is to synchronize transitions from speaker to speaker. The suggestion stemmed from the finding that the pattern of Looks in dyadic conversations was closely related to the pattern of speech: over 70 per cent of long utterances began with the speaker looking away from the listener and over 70 per cent ended with the speaker looking up at the listener. Unfortunately, while his interpretation referred to floor changes, Kendon's data referred only to beginnings and endings of long utterances. Two experiments were therefore set up to investigate floor changes specifically, and findings indicated a rather different pattern from Kendon's. In particular, whether the speaker Looked at the end of an utterance appeared not to be critical in triggering floor changes since a Look was frequently not given or was missed by the listener because he was looking elsewhere. It is suggested that the importance of visual communication in synchronizing conversation is not that it permits eye-contact but that it enables speaker and listener simply to see and be seen by each other.