Eye movements provide a window into human behaviour, attention, and interaction dynamics. Previous research suggests that eye movements are highly influenced by task, setting, and social others; however, most eye tracking research is conducted in single-person, in-lab settings and is yet to be validated in multi-person, naturalistic contexts. One such prevalent real-world context is the collective viewing of a shared scene in social settings, for example, viewing a concert, film, lecture, sports, etc. Here, we apply mobile eye tracking in a real-world multi-person setup and develop a system to stream, record, and analyse synchronised data. We tested our proposed, open-source system while participants (N=60) watched a live concert and a documentary film screening during a public event. We tackled challenges related to networking bandwidth requirements, real-time monitoring, and gaze projection from individual egocentric perspectives to a common coordinate space for shared gaze analysis. Our system achieves precise time synchronisation and accurate gaze projection in challenging dynamic scenes. Further, to illustrate the potential of collective eye-tracking data, we introduce and evaluate novel analysis metrics and visualisations. Overall, our approach contributes to the development and application of versatile multi-person eye tracking systems in real-world social settings. This advancement enables insight into collaborative behaviour, group dynamics, and social interaction, with high ecological validity. Moreover, it paves the path for innovative, interactive tools that promote collaboration and coordination in social contexts.

翻译：眼动为人类行为、注意力和互动动态提供了一个观察窗口。先前研究表明，眼动高度受任务、环境和社交对象的影响；然而，大多数眼动追踪研究是在单人实验室环境中进行的，尚未在多人的自然情境中得到验证。其中一个普遍存在的真实世界情境是社交环境中对共享场景的集体观看，例如观看音乐会、电影、讲座、体育赛事等。在此，我们将移动眼动追踪应用于真实世界的多人设置，并开发了一个系统来流式传输、记录和分析同步数据。我们在参与者（N=60）于公共活动中观看现场音乐会和纪录片放映时测试了我们提出的开源系统。我们解决了与网络带宽需求、实时监控以及从个体自我中心视角到共享注视分析通用坐标空间的注视投影相关的挑战。我们的系统在具有挑战性的动态场景中实现了精确的时间同步和准确的注视投影。此外，为了展示集体眼动追踪数据的潜力，我们引入并评估了新的分析指标和可视化方法。总体而言，我们的方法有助于在真实世界社交环境中开发和应用多功能多人眼动追踪系统。这一进展能够以高生态效度洞察协作行为、群体动态和社交互动。此外，它为在社交情境中促进协作与协调的创新性交互工具铺平了道路。