Eye‐contact in dyads: A test of the Independence Hypothesis

Rutter et al. (1977) reported that for a wide range of ‘looking’ data, collected independently, the amount of eye-contact observed could be accounted for by using a ‘chance’ formula, which assumed independence of Looking on the part of each subject in a dyad. This Independence Hypothesis was tested more rigorously by running a computer simulation, generating ‘eye-contact’ by chance alone. It was impossible to distinguish between this and eye-contact observed in one of the experiments by Lazzerini & Stephenson (1975) employed by Rutter et al. (1977). Hence, there is no reason to doubt that the subjects' Looks are in fact independent.