Telepresence in Videocommunications: A Study on Stereoscopy and Individual Eye Contact

We conducted two experiments to investigate how stereoscopy and technologies that allow individual eye contact affect the impression of telepresence in videoconferencing. Telepresence is defined as the degree to which participants of a telemeeting get the impression of sharing space with the remote site. Results revealed, among other things, that stereoscopy increases telepresence and makes videoconferencing more attractive. In addition, we found that reduced eye contact angles enhance the recognizability of individually addressed nonverbal signals. However, a setup that eliminates horizontal and vertical eye contact angles seems to be advantageous only in conferences with more than two persons per site.