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Injecting Nonverbal Mimicry with Hybrid Avatar-Agent Technologies: A Naïve Approach

Published: 13 October 2018 Publication History

Abstract

Humans communicate to a large degree through nonverbal behavior. Nonverbal mimicry, i.e., the imitation of another's behavior can positively affect the social interactions. In virtual environments, user behavior can be replicated to avatars, and agent behaviors can be artificially constructed. By combining both, hybrid avatar-agent technologies aim at actively mediating virtual communication to foster interpersonal understanding and rapport. We present a naïve prototype, the "Mimicry Injector", that injects artificial mimicry in real-time virtual interactions. In an evaluation study, two participants were embodied in a Virtual Reality (VR) simulation, and had to perform a negotiation task. Their virtual characters either a) replicated only the original behavior or b) displayed the original behavior plus induced mimicry. We found that most participants did not detect the modification. However, the modification did not have a significant impact on the perception of the communication.

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cover image ACM Conferences
SUI '18: Proceedings of the 2018 ACM Symposium on Spatial User Interaction
October 2018
203 pages
ISBN:9781450357081
DOI:10.1145/3267782
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Publication History

Published: 13 October 2018

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Author Tags

  1. Hybrid Avatar-Agent Technology
  2. Mimicry
  3. Nonverbal Behavior
  4. Social Interaction
  5. Virtual Reality

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  • Short-paper
  • Research
  • Refereed limited

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SUI '18
SUI '18: Symposium on Spatial User Interaction
October 13 - 14, 2018
Berlin, Germany

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SUI '18 Paper Acceptance Rate 19 of 61 submissions, 31%;
Overall Acceptance Rate 86 of 279 submissions, 31%

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  • (2024)Impact of Augmented Engagement Model for Collaborative Avatars on a Collaborative Task in Virtual RealityProceedings of the 2024 International Conference on Advanced Visual Interfaces10.1145/3656650.3656684(1-9)Online publication date: 3-Jun-2024
  • (2024)Towards Asynchronous VR Collaboration with Virtual Agents as Placeholder UsersProceedings of the 24th ACM International Conference on Intelligent Virtual Agents10.1145/3652988.3673945(1-4)Online publication date: 16-Sep-2024
  • (2023)Stop Copying MeProceedings of the 23rd ACM International Conference on Intelligent Virtual Agents10.1145/3570945.3607322(1-4)Online publication date: 19-Sep-2023
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