Investigating Spherical Fish Tank Virtual Reality Displays for Establishing Realistic Eye-Contact

Eye-contact is a key aspect of non-verbal human communication in everyday tasks [1]. It provides important social and emotional information that can increase the effectiveness of human communication [8]. In a conversation, eye-contact, or the lack thereof, is constantly evaluated by human brains. Conversation partners derive subjective judgment of others' credibility, focus and confidence [4] from it. Seeking another person's eye-contact is a signal for them that focus is put on that person and the main receptive senses are prepared to receive input from the other person. Likewise breaking eye-contact usually indicates distraction, loss of confidence, loss of interest or shifting focus to a different target.