Organization of oculomotor activity of a person in the joint solution of a discriminatory AB-X task through video communication

In a paired experiment, the subjects solved a discriminatory AB-X task. One of the subjects was briefly shown two similar images of transitional emotional expressions A and B, and the other was shown a target image of X that matches either A or B. The study participant who was shown the target image of X should give an answer to which of the images of A or B corresponds to X. An asymmetry of erroneous responses was found for the extreme pairs of the transition series; the images at the extreme of the transition series are preferably selected as the answers. Since the task is not purely perceptual, the detected effect should be considered as related to the interpretation of verbal descriptions of images given by the participants. The analysis of eye movements showed a high proportion of the time during which the communicant's face is addressed during the discussion: for the role of X, Me = 0.74; for the role of AB, Me = 0.97. The proportion of time during which mutual gaze is simultaneously addressed to each other's faces is also quite high, Me = 0.55. When addressing the communicant's face, the lower part of the face dominates in terms of viewing time and duration of fixations. There are fundamental differences here from the task of identifying emotional expressions, in which the upper part of the face is dominant in terms of viewing time. The obtained results raise the question of the functional role of expressions of the observer's face and gaze in communication.