The eyes are a valuable source of information for a range of social processes. The stare-in-the-crowd effect describes the ability to detect self-directed gaze. Impairment in gaze detection mechanisms, such as the stare-in-the-crowd effect, has implications for social interactions and development of social relationships. Given the frequency with which humans utilize gaze detection in interactions, there is a need to better characterize the stare-in-the-crowd effect. This study utilized a previously validated dynamic visual paradigm to capture the stare-in-the-crowd effect. We compared typically-developing (TD) young adults and young adults with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) on multiple measures of psychophysiology, including eye tracking and heart rate monitoring. Four conditions of visual stimuli were presented: averted gaze, mutual gaze, catching another staring, and getting caught staring. Eye tracking outcomes and arousal (pupil size and heart rate variability) were compared by diagnosis (TD or ASD) and condition (averted, mutual, catching another staring, getting caught staring) using repeated measure ANOVA. Significant interaction of diagnosis and condition was found for IA dwell time, IA fixation count, and IA second fixation duration. Hierarchical regression was used to assess how dimensional behavioral measures predicted eye tracking outcomes and arousal; only two models with advanced theory of mind as a predictor were significant. Overall, we demonstrated that individuals with ASD do respond differently to various gaze conditions in similar patterns to TD individuals, but to a lesser extent. This offers potential targets to social interventions to capitalize on this present but underdeveloped response to gaze. Implications and future directions are discussed.

The awareness of marginality, oppression, and hierarchy at an early age directly influences the creation of work specific to my identity as a woman of color. Born and raised on an island in the Pacific Ocean, I was aware of my sense of location and space relative to the world. The vast ocean separating me from the ‘mainland’ created a specific understanding of marginality, of what is “main” and what is “minor,” and how these categorical placements continued from my youth to ongoing perpetuation. The work I create has a subtle and persistent investigation into my identity as a socio-economic and ethnic minority woman. I attempt to translate and address my identity and cultural significance by creating works that bring about question and dialogue dealing with cultural normative values. My work subtly addresses theories of alienation, burden, heritage, and identity. I use materials and/or focus on importance of materiality to imply an inherent meaning through historical root, core, and/or initial function. Often this function has fixed placement in certain cultures and society. Although the work is visually and conceptually dark in nature, the desired feeling includes a very physical response while coexisting within the installation’s environment. Oppositional Gaze is a video based on my personal experience. I approach making from a lived and ongoing experience that is constant. On an ordinary day, I often witness acts of repression, acts of injustice, and absurd occurrences that are either directed at me or observed toward others. I impose inner turmoil upon myself of whether or not I shall respond or absorb what I have witnessed. These experiences have emerged at a time in my life, in a place I considered to be a dislocation of my physical presence in relation to my constant neighbor, with a metaphysical questioning of placement. The video is a visual and auditory whisper that reflects my internalized struggle. These true encounters of questions, statements, and name-calling were specifically chosen to address this reality on a large screen, symbolic to the hovering subjection of prejudices and stereotypes that resonate within me. These encounters are unexpected, yet not surprising when they happen due to the frequency of their occurrence.

This thesis combines an academic investigation and creative writing practice in an attempt to understand the politics at work within mainstream notions of working-class masculine identity, and the role of literature in these discourses. Beginning with an academic analysis, the formulations and intersection of class and masculinity are outlined, explicating how systems, implemented by the middle-class creation of values, form social narratives whereby men of certain settings with associative lifestyles and practices, are privileged over other less valued groups of men. In this respect, its concerns are primarily with the socio-symbolic. Locating this discourse within an Aristotelian dichotomy of the mind and the body, this theoretical position is then applied in the scrutiny of six mainstream fictional narratives of two historic periods, each originally held to be politically subversive. In calling to question the validity of these original claims, further questions are raised regarding the nature of the mainstream fictional narrative at large, and whether it is an effective way of representing the politics of working-class identity, or whether, by its nature, it serves to reproduce its working-class characters as fixed subjects, immovable from their positions in a stable class system. This line of inquiry is then further explored in the deconstruction of my own creative work, in which I initially sought to represent the concerns of my own working-class heritage. The resulting issues raised with respect to mainstream, linear narrative leading to the investigation of other potential forms of representation for the working-class male, culminating in the exploration of my own shifting identity in a non-linear, multi-directional collection of poetry.

Notre recherche prend appui sur la sensibilité des adolescents délinquants au « regard de travers ». Le regard dévoile toujours une image qui les assigne au rang d’objet consommable, voire de déchet de l’Autre. Tentés par cette image de vérité, ils deviennent conformes à cet objet « vu » dont la ressemblance au « délinquant » est le paradigme. Nous constatons que les marques et les insignes sociaux de la délinquance piègent le sujet en faisant obstacle au signifiant. La délinquance devient alors « séduisante », car elle est un Insigne honorifique qui règle la question de l’identité par l’offre d’un savoir en plus. Conforme à ce regard, même s’il le vise de travers, le sujet désavoue le manque. L’Imaginaire tient une place centrale dans notre conception de la délinquance et dans la constitution du sujet adolescent qui opte pour la « tentation délinquante ». Nous proposerons un état particulier de la structure qui utilise l’Imaginaire comme moyen pour nouer le Réel au Symbolique. / Our research has been informed by the sensitivity of juvenile delinquents to a negative external regard. This regard reveals an image, which places the subject at the level of an expendable object, the dregs of the Other. Tempted by this image, they conform to this object, which is the embodiment of the delinquency. We can see that the marks and badges of delinquency trap the subject, blocking the signifier. Delinquency, therefore, becomes seductive as it is an honorary badge that solves the problem of identity by giving extra information that helps the subject create a sense of self. By conforming to this regard, even though it is negative, the subject can avoid the symbolic castration.The Imaginary plays a central role in our conception of delinquency and in the constitution of the adolescent subject who chooses the temptation of delinquency. We propose a particular state of the structure that uses the imaginary as a way to make the link between the Real and the Symbolic.

Les dispositifs d'eye-tracking ont un très fort potentiel en tant que modalité d'entrée en IHM (Interaction Homme Machine), en particulier en situation de mobilité. Dans cette thèse, nous nous concentrons sur la mise en œuvre de cette potentialité en mettant en évidence les scénarios dans lesquels l’eye-tracking possède des avantages évidents par rapport à toutes les autres modalités d’interaction. Au cours de nos recherches, nous avons constaté que cette technologie ne dispose pas de méthodes pratiques pour le déclenchement de commandes, ce qui réduit l'usage de tels dispositifs. Dans ce contexte, nous étudions la combinaison d'un eye-tracking et des mouvements volontaires de la tête lorsque le regard est fixe, ce qui permet de déclencher des commandes diverses sans utiliser les mains ni changer la direction du regard. Nous avons ainsi proposé un nouvel algorithme pour la détection des mouvements volontaires de la tête à regard fixe en utilisant uniquement les images capturées par la caméra de scène qui équipe les eye-trackers portés sur la tête, afin de réduire le temps de calcul. Afin de tester la performance de notre algorithme de détection des mouvements de la tête à regard fixe, et l'acceptation par l'utilisateur du déclenchement des commandes par ces mouvements lorsque ses deux mains sont occupées par une autre activité, nous avons effectué des expériences systématiques grâce à l'application EyeMusic que nous avons conçue et développée. Cette application EyeMusic est un système pour l'apprentissage de la musique capable de jouer les notes d’une mesure d'une partition que l’utilisateur ne comprend pas. En effectuant un mouvement volontaire de la tête qui fixe de son regard une mesure particulière d'une partition, l'utilisateur obtient un retour audio. La conception, le développement et les tests d’utilisabilité du premier prototype de cette application sont présentés dans cette thèse. L'utilisabilité de notre application EyeMusic est confirmée par les résultats expérimentaux : 85% des participants ont été en mesure d’utiliser tous les mouvements volontaires de la tête à regard fixe que nous avons implémentés dans le prototype. Le taux de réussite moyen de cette application est de 70%, ce qui est partiellement influencé par la performance intrinsèque de l'eye-tracker que nous utilisons. La performance de notre algorithme de détection des mouvements de la tête à regard fixe est 85%, et il n’y a pas de différence significative entre la performance de chaque mouvement de la tête testé. Également, nous avons exploré deux scénarios d'applications qui reposent sur les mêmes principes de commande, EyeRecipe et EyePay, dont les détails sont également présentés dans cette thèse. / Eye-tracking has a very strong potential in human computer interaction (HCI) as an input modality, particularly in mobile situations. In this thesis, we concentrate in demonstrating this potential by highlighting the scenarios in which the eye-tracking possesses obvious advantages comparing with all the other interaction modalities. During our research, we find that this technology lacks convenient action triggering methods, which can scale down the performance of interacting by gaze. In this instance, we investigate the combination of eye-tracking and fixed-gaze head movement, which allows us to trigger various commands without using our hands or changing gaze direction. We have proposed a new algorithm for fixed-gaze head movement detection using only scene images captured by the scene camera equipped in front of the head-mounted eye-tracker, for the purpose of saving computation time. To test the performance of our fixed-gaze head movement detection algorithm and the acceptance of triggering commands by these movements when the user's hands are occupied by another task, we have implemented some tests in the EyeMusic application that we have designed and developed. The EyeMusic system is a music reading system, which can play the notes of a measure in a music score that the user does not understand. By making a voluntary head movement when fixing his/her gaze on the same point of a music score, the user can obtain the desired audio feedback. The design, development and usability testing of the first prototype for this application are presented in this thesis. The usability of our EyeMusic application is confirmed by the experimental results, as 85% of participants were able to use all the head movements we implemented in the prototype. The average success rate of this application is 70%, which is partly influenced by the performance of the eye-tracker we use. The performance of our fixed-gaze head movement detection algorithm is 85%, and there were no significant differences between the performance of each head movement. Apart from the EyeMusic application, we have explored two other scenarios that are based on the same control principles: EyeRecipe and EyePay, the details of these two applications are also presented in this thesis.

O impacto visual é importante tanto nos modos de construções de sentidos nas tradições bantas quanto no contexto umbandista. E a contribuição da cultura africana na composição do ethos da população brasileira é expressiva. Tendo isso em vista, objetivou-se apreender, em comunidades umbandistas, nuances dos modos de construção, transmissão e apreensão de significados relativos ao mundo, ao eu e ao outro, por meio de perspectivas umbandistas de articulação do sentido. Para tanto, o pesquisador assumiu uma posição em que foi possível uma função de abertura ao discurso do Outro, proporcionando que as enunciações decorrentes das relações em campo pudessem ecoar. No processo de experiência do pesquisador em rituais umbandistas e na produção das imagens fotográficas, os colaboradores enunciaram, por imagens e ou palavras, suas experiências pessoais a partir do material simbólico contido no patrimônio cultural que os atravessa, que Lacan chamaria de Outro. A consideração da transferência e do lugar ocupado pelo pesquisador em campo, assim como das repetições e intersecções entre as imagens e os dizeres sobre elas, foi fundamental para a revelação de implícitos deste universo. A busca pelo impacto visual configurou o meio para que o pesquisador, interpretado pela umbanda como consulente, pudesse ser olhado por ela e assim, olhando-a, entender parte de sua dinâmica. Nesse processo, entendemos como o olhar é importante na reelaboração de si (do lugar no mundo de cada um, assim como de uma comunidade) a qual pode ser trabalhada no contexto umbandista, onde o papel do ancestral e todo um repertório simbólico a ele associado têm destaque. A partir dos resultados deste trabalho, sugerimos que a experiência na umbanda corrobora a hipótese de que é preciso conhecer, reconhecer e lidar de forma pacífica com as nossas raízes. Percebemos, ainda, que nessa religião há um espaço privilegiado onde isso possa ocorrer a cada ritual, e nas experiências cotidianas de seus fiéis, possibilitando recombinações e reconstruções simbólicas tanto no nível pessoal quanto social. / Visual impact is important not only to the ways in which banto traditions are built but also to the umbandista context. And the African culture contribution in constituting the Brazilian populations ethos is expressive as well. Having that in mind, we aimed to apprehend, in umbandista communities, nuances of how meanings related to the world, the self, and the other are constructed, transmitted and understood through umbandista perspectives of significance articulation. In order to do that, the researcher assumed a position where an openness function to the Others speech was possible, which has permitted the echoing of enunciations that arose from field relations. Within the process of the researchers experience in umbadista rituals and in photographic image production, the collaborators enounced their personal experiences through images and/or words, from the symbolic material present in the cultural heritage they carry, which Lacan would denominate the Other. Considering the transference and the position occupied by the researcher in field as well as the repetitions and the intersections between the images and the sayings about them was central to expose the implicitness of this universe. The search for visual impact has been the instrument elected by the researcher who, interpreted by umbanda as a consultant, could be seen by it and thus, looking at it, be able to understand part of its dynamic. During the process, we have understood how important the gaze is in oneselfs remodeling (of each ones as well as a communitys position in the world), and that it can be developed in the umbandista context where the ancestors role and a whole symbolic repertoire related to it are highlighted. As from the results of this research, we suggest that the experience in umbanda corroborates the hypothesis that it is necessary to know, recognize and deal peacefully with our roots. We have also observed that there is a privileged space in this religion where that demand may occur in each of its rituals and in its participants daily experiences, in a way that symbolic re-combinations and reconstructions are possible both in personal and social levels.

Cette thèse explore la transgression et la mise en lumière des mécanismes de la pulsion scopique dans l’œuvre plastique et littéraire d’Ana Clavel ainsi que d’autres auteurs latino-américains contemporains : Mario Bellatin, César Aira et Jorge Alberto Gudiño, avec qui nous allons établir une similitude esthétique d’écriture. Le domaine pulsionnel, tel qu’il est étudié à travers la littérature, s’inscrit dans une tradition psychanalytique qui vise à élucider la question du désir. Au cœur de ce travail autour des enjeux du « regard » qui s’emparent des corps artificiels des poupées et de l’écriture du désir, nous examinons la transformation des esthétiques du corps : Ana Clavel, dans son corpus, présente trois dimensions distinctes : le corps pulsionnel, le corps artificiel et le corps genré. Par le biais de la lecture de ces textes, nous découvrons que les corps s’enferment dans une réalité intelligible qui nous renvoie à une conventionnalité asphyxiante. C’est dans cette perspective que nous allons repenser une philosophie des corps du désir qui contribue à déstabiliser notre pensée des dichotomies corporelles à travers la mise en œuvre de mécanismes comme la transgression et la métaphore. Notre démarche cherche à éclaircir l’énigme de la pulsion scopique psychanalytique et ses applications dans une perspective esthétique qui rapproche la littérature de la psychanalyse : comment l’écriture du désir et la création littéraire se réinventent-elles à travers les enjeux de certains mouvements d’avant-garde ? De quelle manière le lecteur d’aujourd’hui perçoit-il ces mécanismes et dans quelle mesure son propre regard peut-il se transformer ? La pulsion est une force irrépressible qui rassemble des dualités présentées comme antagonistes qui pourraient s’harmoniser dans une lecture transgressive. Les idées de Ricœur et de sa métaphore « voir comme » peuvent se percevoir en lien avec celles de Lacan et sa catégorie de la pulsion scopique, tout en se rapprochant des réflexions de Barthes pour ce qui est du domaine de la jouissance. Selon notre analyse, le mécanisme du regard, pris en tant qu’artifice esthético-sémantique, permet une expression poétique du désir en repensant les espaces et la notion de frontière : l’imaginaire, organisé comme un langage, et la réalité textuelle, qui, d’après Lacan, échapperait à la représentation d’une autre réalité parallèle et s’associerait à l’impossibilité de la jouissance. Nos interprétations nous amènent à formuler le déploiement d’une évolution vers l’idée d’une « neutralité » des corps, qui concrétise une altérité transformant des réalités jusqu’à présent pensées en tant qu’opposées, comme peuvent l’être le biologique du corps et une corporalité qui concilie des catégories langagières tels que la pudeur et l’impudeur à travers la métaphore avec la pulsion scopique. Au cours de ce travail, les travaux d’Elisabeth Badinter, Pierre Bourdieu et Françoise Héritier font écho à une possible évolution des catégories sociales et génériques dans les domaines de l’art et de la littérature. Grâce aux héritages de l’avant-garde, nous avons les moyens, en tant que lecteurs, de décrypter, au-delà du langage formalisé, une nouvelle réalité où, pour le moment, l’énigme de la pulsion scopique propose, à travers l’écriture, de concilier les opposés. L’art et la littérature demeurent de véritables moteurs de réflexion qui remettent en cause l’inertie dans laquelle nous maintient le binarisme, et nous amènent à envisager l’hypothèse d’une neutralité source de créativité, et contenant en son sein l’essence d’une révolution artistique qui repense l’altérité. / This thesis explores the transgression and sheds light on the mechanisms of scopic drive in the plastic and literary work by Ana Clavel, as well as by other Latin American contemporary authors: Mario Bellatin, César Aira and Jorge Alberto Gudiño, with whom we are going to establish an aesthetical similarity of their writing styles. The pulsional domain, such as it is studied through the literature, lies into a psycho-analytical tradition that targets the clarification of the concept of desire. At the heart of this work, built around the stakes of the « gaze » which takes hold of the dolls’ artificial bodies and the desire’s writings, we are analyzing the evolution of the body’s aesthetics. Ana Clavel, in her corpus, introduces three different dimensions of it: the pulsional body, the artificial body and the gendered body. Through the reading of these texts, we figure out that the bodies imprison themselves into an intelligible reality that leads us to an asphyxiating conventionality. In this perspective, we are going to redesign a philosophy of desire’s bodies which contributes to destabilize our way of thinking about dichotomies (corporal, generic and linguistic) through the implementation of mechanisms such as transgression and metaphor. Our approach tries to shed light on the psychoanalytical scopic drive’s enigma and its applications in an aesthetical perspective that brings the literature closer to the psychoanalysis: how do the desire’s writings and the literary creation reinvent themselves through the issues of certain avant-garde movements? At which extent does the contemporary reader perceive these mechanisms, and at which extent can their own gaze be transformed? Drive is an unstoppable force that brings together dualities, introduced as antagonistic, which can be harmonized in a transgressive reading. Ricœur’s ideas and his metaphor can be perceived as connected to Lacan’s and his scopic drive’s category, while approaching to Barthes’ reflections about the domain of enjoyment. According to our analysis, the mechanism of gaze (seen as an aesthetic-semantic artifice) allows a poetical expression of the desire that rethinks the spaces and the notion of boundary: the imaginary, organized as a language, and the textual reality that, according to Lacan, escapes the representation of another parallel reality and matches the impossibility of pleasure. Our interpretations lead us to draw the deployment of an evolution towards the idea of a “neutrality” of the bodies, which concretizes an otherness which transforms realities until then thought as opposite, such as the body’s biology and a corporality that reconciles linguistic categories like the reticence and the shamelessness through the metaphor with the scopic drive. During this thesis, the works of Elisabeth Badinter, Pierre Bourdieu and Françoise Héritier echo a possible evolution of social and generic categories in the domains of art and literature. Thanks to the heritages of avant-garde we are provided with the means to decrypt, as readers and beyond the formalized language, a new reality where the enigma of scopic drive proposes to reconcile the opposites. Art and literature host some real engines of reflection, that reconsider the inertia where the binarism holds us and lead us to contemplate the hypothesis of a neutrality which is source of creativity, containing on its own the essence of an artistic revolution that redesign the alterity.

The present study investigates the relationship between individual differences in children's temperament and their responsiveness to joint attention. Twenty-five 11-month-old children (12 girls and 13 boys) were presented with a gaze-following task in a laboratory setting, and parent reports of temperament were collected. Findings indicate that children's ability to correctly follow an experimenter's gaze differed as a function of individual temperament predispositions. Children high in perceptual sensitivity and negative affect engaged in relatively less frequent gaze-following, consistent with reports from previous research. However analysis of the dimension of orienting/effortful control produced an unexpected finding; that children low in effortful control were relatively more likely to respond to joint attentional bids. Overall, these findings are consistent with a view of temperament as a moderator of children's engagement in joint attention, and raise the possibility that joint attention may be a mechanism underlying previous reports of temperament–language relationships.

People with severe motor disabilities may communicate using their eye movements aided by a virtual keyboard and an eye tracker. Text entry by gaze may also benefit users immersed in virtual or augmented realities, when they do not have access to a physical keyboard or touchscreen. Thus, both users with and without disabilities may take advantage of the ability to enter text by gaze. However, methods for text entry by gaze are typically slow and uncomfortable. In this thesis we propose EyeSwipe as a step further towards fast and comfortable text entry by gaze. EyeSwipe maps gaze paths into words, similarly to how finger traces are used on swipe-based methods for touchscreen devices. A gaze path differs from the finger trace in that it does not have clear start and end positions. To segment the gaze path from the user\'s continuous gaze data stream, EyeSwipe requires the user to explicitly indicate its beginning and end. The user can quickly glance at the vicinity of the other characters that compose the word. Candidate words are sorted based on the gaze path and presented to the user. We discuss two versions of EyeSwipe. EyeSwipe 1 uses a deterministic gaze gesture called Reverse Crossing to select both the first and last letters of the word. Considering the lessons learned during the development and test of EyeSwipe 1 we proposed EyeSwipe 2. The user emits commands to the interface by switching the focus between regions. In a text entry experiment comparing EyeSwipe 2 to EyeSwipe 1, 11 participants achieved an average text entry rate of 12.58 words per minute (wpm) with EyeSwipe 1 and 14.59 wpm with EyeSwipe 2 after using each method for 75 minutes. The maximum entry rates achieved with EyeSwipe 1 and EyeSwipe 2 were, respectively, 21.27 wpm and 32.96 wpm. Participants considered EyeSwipe 2 to be more comfortable and faster, while less accurate than EyeSwipe 1. Additionally, with EyeSwipe 2 we proposed the use of gaze path data to dynamically adjust the gaze estimation. Using data from the experiment we show that gaze paths can be used to dynamically improve gaze estimation during the interaction. / Pessoas com deficiências motoras severas podem se comunicar usando movimentos do olhar com o auxílio de um teclado virtual e um rastreador de olhar. A entrada de texto usando o olhar também beneficia usuários imersos em realidade virtual ou realidade aumentada, quando não possuem acesso a um teclado físico ou tela sensível ao toque. Assim, tanto usuários com e sem deficiência podem se beneficiar da possibilidade de entrar texto usando o olhar. Entretanto, métodos para entrada de texto com o olhar são tipicamente lentos e desconfortáveis. Nesta tese propomos o EyeSwipe como mais um passo em direção à entrada rápida e confortável de texto com o olhar. O EyeSwipe mapeia gestos do olhar em palavras, de maneira similar a como os movimentos do dedo em uma tela sensível ao toque são utilizados em métodos baseados em gestos (swipe). Um gesto do olhar difere de um gesto com os dedos em que ele não possui posições de início e fim claramente definidas. Para segmentar o gesto do olhar a partir do fluxo contínuo de dados do olhar, o EyeSwipe requer que o usuário indique explicitamente seu início e fim. O usuário pode olhar rapidamente a vizinhança dos outros caracteres que compõe a palavra. Palavras candidatas são ordenadas baseadas no gesto do olhar e apresentadas ao usuário. Discutimos duas versões do EyeSwipe. O EyeSwipe 1 usa um gesto do olhar determinístico chamado Cruzamento Reverso para selecionar tanto a primeira quanto a última letra da palavra. Levando em consideração os aprendizados obtidos durante o desenvolvimento e teste do EyeSwipe 1 nós propusemos o EyeSwipe 2. O usuário emite comandos para a interface ao trocar o foco entre as regiões do teclado. Em um experimento de entrada de texto comparando o EyeSwipe 2 com o EyeSwipe 1, 11 participantes atingiram uma taxa de entrada média de 12.58 palavras por minuto (ppm) usando o EyeSwipe 1 e 14.59 ppm com o EyeSwipe 2 após utilizar cada método por 75 minutos. A taxa de entrada de texto máxima alcançada com o EyeSwipe 1 e EyeSwipe 2 foram, respectivamente, 21.27 ppm e 32.96 ppm. Os participantes consideraram o EyeSwipe 2 mais confortável e rápido, mas menos preciso do que o EyeSwipe 1. Além disso, com o EyeSwipe 2 nós propusemos o uso dos dados dos gestos do olhar para ajustar a estimação do olhar dinamicamente. Utilizando dados obtidos no experimento mostramos que os gestos do olhar podem ser usados para melhorar a estimação dinamicamente durante a interação.

The social element of playing games is what makes us play together to enjoy more than just what the game itself has to offer. There are millions of games with different rules and goals; They are played by people of many cultures and various ages. However, this social element remains as crucial. Nowadays, the role of social robots and virtual agents is rapidly expanding in daily activities and entertainment and one of these areas is games. Therefore, it seems desirable for an agent to be able to play games socially, as opposed to simply having the computer make the moves in game application. To achieve this goal, verbal and non-verbal communication should be inspired by the game events and human input, to create a human-like social experience. Moreover, a better social interaction can be created if the agent can change its game strategies in accordance with social criteria. To bring sociability to the gaming experience with many different robots, virtual agents and games, we have developed a generic software framework which generates social comments based on the gameplay semantics. We also conducted a user study, with this framework as a core component, involving the rummy card game and the checkers board game. In our analysis, we observed both subjective and objective measures of the effects of social gaze and comments in the gaming interactions. Participants' gaming experience proved to be significantly more social, human-like, enjoyable and adoptable when social behaviors were employed. Moreover, since facial expressions can be a strong indication of internal state, we measured the number of participants' smiles during the gameplay and observed them to smile significantly more when social behaviors were involved than when they were not.