Skip to main content

Effects of Coupling in Human-Virtual Agent Body Interaction

  • Conference paper
Intelligent Virtual Agents (IVA 2014)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNAI,volume 8637))

Included in the following conference series:

Abstract

This paper presents a study of the dynamic coupling between a user and a virtual character during body interaction. Coupling is directly linked with other dimensions, such as co-presence, engagement, and believability, and was measured in an experiment that allowed users to describe their subjective feelings about those dimensions of interest. The experiment was based on a theatrical game involving the imitation of slow upper-body movements and the proposal of new movements by the user and virtual agent. The agent’s behaviour varied in autonomy: the agent could limit itself to imitating the user’s movements only, initiate new movements, or combine both behaviours. After the game, each participant completed a questionnaire regarding their engagement in the interaction, their subjective feeling about the co-presence of the agent, etc. Based on four main dimensions of interest, we tested several hypotheses against our experimental results, which are discussed here.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this chapter

Chapter
USD 29.95
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
eBook
USD 39.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
Softcover Book
USD 54.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Compact, lightweight edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Purchases are for personal use only

Institutional subscriptions

Preview

Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.

Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.

References

  1. De Loor, P., Bevacqua, E., Stanković, I., Maatallaoui, A., Nédélec, A., Buche, C.: Utilisation de la notion de couplage pour la modélisation d’agents virtuels interactifs socialement présents. In: Pevedic, B.L., Jost, C. (eds.) Actes de la deuxième conférence Intercompréhension de l’intraspécifique à l’interspécifique. Oxford University Press, Guidel (to appear, 2014)

    Google Scholar 

  2. Heeter, C.: Being There: The subjective experience of presence. Teleoperators and Virtual Environments (1992)

    Google Scholar 

  3. Bailenson, J.N., Guadagno, R.E., Aharoni, E., Dimov, A., Beall, A.C., Blascovich, J.: Comparing behavioral and self-report measures of embodied agents: Social presence in immersive virtual environments. In: Proceedings of the 7th Annual International Workshop on PRESENCE (2004)

    Google Scholar 

  4. Wong, J.W.E., McGee, K.: Frown More, Talk More: Effects of Facial Expressions in Establishing Conversational Rapport with Virtual Agents. In: Nakano, Y., Neff, M., Paiva, A., Walker, M. (eds.) IVA 2012. LNCS, vol. 7502, pp. 419–425. Springer, Heidelberg (2012)

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  5. Traum, D., DeVault, D., Lee, J., Wang, Z., Marsella, S.: Incremental Dialogue Understanding and Feedback for Multiparty, Multimodal Conversation. In: Nakano, Y., Neff, M., Paiva, A., Walker, M. (eds.) IVA 2012. LNCS, vol. 7502, pp. 275–288. Springer, Heidelberg (2012)

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  6. Prepin, K., Pelachaud, C.: Basics of Intersubjectivity Dynamics: Model of Synchrony Emergence When Dialogue Partners Understand Each Other. Agents and Artificial Intelligence 271, 302–318 (2013)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  7. Insko, B.: Measuring presence: Subjective, behavioral and physiological methods. Emerging Communication (2003)

    Google Scholar 

  8. Schuemie, M., van der Straaten, P., Krijn, M., van der Mast, C.: Research on Presence in Virtual Reality: a Survey. CyberPsychology and Behavior 4(2), 183–201 (2001)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  9. Witmer, B., Singer, M.: Measuring presence in virtual environments: A presence questionnaire. Presence 7(3), 225–240 (1998)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  10. Slater, M.: How colorful was your day? Why questionnaires cannot assess presence in virtual environments. Presence: Teleoperators and Virtual Environments 13(4), 484–493 (2004)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  11. Riedl, M.O., Young, R.M.: An objective character believability evaluation procedure for multi-agent story generation systems. In: Panayiotopoulos, T., Gratch, J., Aylett, R.S., Ballin, D., Olivier, P., Rist, T. (eds.) IVA 2005. LNCS (LNAI), vol. 3661, pp. 278–291. Springer, Heidelberg (2005)

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  12. Hingston, P. (ed.): Believable Bots: Can Computers Play Like People? Springer (2012)

    Google Scholar 

  13. O’Brien, H., Toms, E.: What is user engagement? A conceptual framework for defining user engagement with technology. American Society for Information Science & Technology 59, 938–955 (2008)

    Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

Authors

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

Copyright information

© 2014 Springer International Publishing Switzerland

About this paper

Cite this paper

Bevacqua, E., Stanković, I., Maatallaoui, A., Nédélec, A., De Loor, P. (2014). Effects of Coupling in Human-Virtual Agent Body Interaction. In: Bickmore, T., Marsella, S., Sidner, C. (eds) Intelligent Virtual Agents. IVA 2014. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 8637. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-09767-1_7

Download citation

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-09767-1_7

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-319-09766-4

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-319-09767-1

  • eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)

Publish with us

Policies and ethics