research-article

A Friendly Face in the Crowd: Reducing Public Speaking Anxiety with an Emotional Support Agent in the Audience

Authors:

Prasanth Murali,

Timothy BickmoreAuthors Info & Claims

IVA '21: Proceedings of the 21st ACM International Conference on Intelligent Virtual Agents

Pages 156 - 163

https://doi.org/10.1145/3472306.3478364

Published: 14 September 2021 Publication History

Abstract

We present Friendly Face - a virtual agent designed to reduce public speaking anxiety by standing within an audience. The agent senses the speaker's behavior during an oral presentation and provides emotional and instrumental support. The system unobtrusively tracks the motion, speech, and prosody of the presenter and provides an intuitive interface to give supportive feedback whenever the presenter looks at the agent, attentive listening behavior through agent gaze and backchannel listening behavior, and time and topic cueing based on real-time analysis of speech content compared to presentation slide contents. An evaluation of Friendly Face agent with a functionally equivalent control system demonstrated that the agent system led to significant reductions in public speaking anxiety compared to a control condition, assessed both objectively with physiological measures and validated self-report instruments.

References

[1]

Furmark, T., et al., Social phobia in the general population: prevalence and sociodemographic profile. Soc Psychiatry Psychiatr Epidemiol, 1999. 34(8): p. 416--24.

[2]

Bishop, J., K. Bauer, and E. Becker, A survey of counseling needs of male and female college students. Journal of College Student Development, 1998. 39: p. 205--210.

[3]

Daly, J.A., Avoiding communication: Shyness, reticence, and communication apprehension. 1997: Hampton Pr.

[4]

Daly, J.A., A.L. Vangelisti, and D.J.J.C.M. Weber, Speech anxiety affects how people prepare speeches: A protocol analysis of the preparation processes of speakers. 1995. 62(4): p. 383--397.

[5]

Menzel, K.E. and L.J.J.C.E. Carrell, The relationship between preparation and performance in public speaking. 1994. 43(1): p. 17--26.

[6]

Kasl, S.V., G.F.J.J.o.p. Mahl, and s. psychology, Relationship of disturbances and hesitations in spontaneous speech to anxiety. 1965. 1(5): p. 425.

[7]

Weiser, M. and J.S. Brown, Designing Calm Technology. 1995: Xerox PARC.

[8]

Pousman, Z. and J. Stasko, A Taxonomy of Ambient Information Systems: Four Patterns of Design, in AVI. 2006.

Digital Library

[9]

Butler, J. and R. Baumeister, The Trouble with Friendly Faces: Performance with a Supportive Audience. J. Personality and Social Psychology, 1998. 75(5): p. 1213--1230.

[10]

Uchino, B., Social Support and Physical Health: Understanding the Health Consequences of Relationships. 2004, New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.

[11]

Trinh, H., L. Ring, and T. Bickmore, DynamicDuo: Co-presenting with Virtual Agents, in ACM SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI). 2015.

Digital Library

[12]

Murali, P., et al., Speaker Hand-Offs in Collaborative Human-Agent Oral Presentations, in ACM International Conference on Intelligent Virtual Agents (IVA). 2018.

Digital Library

[13]

Chollet, M., et al., Exploring feedback strategies to improve public speaking: An interactive virtual audience framework, in UbiComp'15. 2015. p. 1143--1154.

Digital Library

[14]

Chollet, M., et al., Influence of Individual Differences when Training Public Speaking with Virtual Audiences, in IVA. 2018.

Digital Library

[15]

Slater, M., D.P. Pertaub, and A. Steed, Public Speaking in Virtual Reality: Facing an Audience of Avatars. Vol. 19. 1999. 6--9.

Digital Library

[16]

Pertaub, D., M. Slater, and C. Barker, An experiment on public speaking anxiety in response to three different types of virtual audience. Presence: Teleoperators and virtual environments, 2002. 11(1): p. 68--78.

Digital Library

[17]

Anderson, P., B. Rothbaum, and L. Hodges, Virtual Reality Exposure in the Treatment of Social Anxiety. Vol. 10. 2003. 240--247.

[18]

Söyler, E., C. Gunaratne, and M. Akbaş, Towards a Comprehensive Simulator for Public Speaking Anxiety Treatment. 2017. p. 195--205.

[19]

Wang, J., et al. Alexa as Coach: Leveraging Smart Speakers to Build Social Agents that Reduce Public Speaking Anxiety.

Digital Library

[20]

Kimani, E., et al. You'll be Great: Virtual Agent-based Cognitive Restructuring to Reduce Public Speaking Anxiety. IEEE.

[21]

Matsumoto, D. and H.S. Hwang, Emblematic Gestures (Emblems). The Encyclopedia of Cross-Cultural Psychology, 2013. 2: p. 464--466.

[22]

Maatman, R., J. Gratch, and S. Marsella, Natural behavior of a listening agent, in International Conference on Intelligent Virtual Agents (IVA). 2005.

Digital Library

[23]

Bickmore, T. and R. Picard, Establishing and Maintaining Long-Term Human-Computer Relationships. ACM Transactions on Computer Human Interaction, 2005. 12(2): p. 293--327.

Digital Library

[24]

Asadi, R., et al., Real-time Presentation Tracking Using Semantic Keyword Spotting, in Interspeech. 2016.

[25]

Horvath, A. and L. Greenberg, Development and Validation of the Working Alliance Inventory. Journal of Counseling Psychology, 1989. 36(2): p. 223--233.

[26]

Cassell, J., H. Vilhjálmsson, and T. Bickmore, BEAT: The Behavior Expression Animation Toolkit, in SIGGRAPH '01. 2001: Los Angeles, CA. p. 477--486.

Digital Library

[27]

McCroskey, J.C. and L.L. McCroskey, Self-report as an approach to measuring communication competence. Communication Research Reports, 1988. 5(2): p. 108--113.

[28]

Niles, A.N., et al., Affect labeling enhances exposure effectiveness for public speaking anxiety. Behaviour Research and Therapy, 2015. 68: p. 27--36.

[29]

Chollet, M., T. Massachi, and S. Scherer. Racing Heart and Sweaty Palms. in Intelligent Virtual Agents. 2017. Cham: Springer International Publishing.

[30]

E4 wristband. Available from: https://www.empatica.com/research/e4/.

[31]

Tarvainen, M.P., et al., Kubios HRV -- Heart rate variability analysis software. Computer Methods and Programs in Biomedicine, 2014. 113(1): p. 210--220.

Digital Library

[32]

Braun, V. and V. Clarke, Using thematic analysis in psychology. Qualitative Research in Psychology, 2006. 3(2): p. 77--101.

Cited By

Ochs MRistorcelli MD’Ambra ACasanova RPergandi J(2024)REVITALISE: viRtual bEhaVioral skIlls TrAining for pubLIc SpEakingProceedings of the 24th ACM International Conference on Intelligent Virtual Agents10.1145/3652988.3696202(1-3)Online publication date: 16-Sep-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3652988.3696202
Min YJeong J(2024)Public Speaking Q&A Practice with LLM-Generated Personas in Virtual Reality2024 IEEE International Symposium on Mixed and Augmented Reality Adjunct (ISMAR-Adjunct)10.1109/ISMAR-Adjunct64951.2024.00143(493-496)Online publication date: 21-Oct-2024
https://doi.org/10.1109/ISMAR-Adjunct64951.2024.00143
Al Owayyed MTielman MHartholt ASpecht MBrinkman W(2024)Agent-based social skills training systems: the ARTES architecture, interaction characteristics, learning theories and future outlooksBehaviour & Information Technology10.1080/0144929X.2024.2374891(1-28)Online publication date: 20-Jul-2024
https://doi.org/10.1080/0144929X.2024.2374891
Show More Cited By

Index Terms

A Friendly Face in the Crowd: Reducing Public Speaking Anxiety with an Emotional Support Agent in the Audience
1. Computing methodologies
  1. Artificial intelligence
  2. Computer graphics
2. Human-centered computing
  1. Human computer interaction (HCI)
    1. Interaction paradigms
      1. Virtual reality

Index terms have been assigned to the content through auto-classification.

Recommendations

Addressing Public Speaking Anxiety in Real-time Using a Virtual Public Speaking Coach and Physiological Sensors
IVA '19: Proceedings of the 19th ACM International Conference on Intelligent Virtual Agents

Oral presentations are important and challenging tasks that most people struggle with due to public speaking anxiety. Virtual agents have been shown to be effective communication skills training coaches and effective as virtual audiences for inducing ...
Public Speaking Anxiety in a Real Classroom: Towards Developing a Reflection System
CHI EA '19: Extended Abstracts of the 2019 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems

Public speaking is recognized as an important skill for success in learning and education. However, the mere thought of public speaking elicits anxiety in many people. This anxiety may manifest in a student's nonverbal behaviors and physiological ...
Adaptive Emotional Support for Groups
UMAP '22: Proceedings of the 30th ACM Conference on User Modeling, Adaptation and Personalization

When faced with a difficult situation, searching for emotional support is one of the most natural things to do. Being supported not only helps regulating the negative emotions, but it also promotes coping skills and psychological adjustment to stressful ...

Comments

Information & Contributors

Information

Published In

cover image ACM Conferences

IVA '21: Proceedings of the 21st ACM International Conference on Intelligent Virtual Agents

September 2021

238 pages

ISBN:9781450386197

DOI:10.1145/3472306

Copyright © 2021 ACM.

Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected]

Sponsors

SIGAI: ACM Special Interest Group on Artificial Intelligence

Publisher

Association for Computing Machinery

New York, NY, United States

Publication History

Published: 14 September 2021

Permissions

Request permissions for this article.

Request Permissions

Check for updates

Author Tags

Qualifiers

Research-article
Research
Refereed limited

Conference

IVA '21

Sponsor:

SIGAI

IVA '21: ACM International Conference on Intelligent Virtual Agents

September 14 - 17, 2021

Virtual Event, Japan

Acceptance Rates

Overall Acceptance Rate 53 of 196 submissions, 27%

Contributors

Other Metrics

View Article Metrics

Bibliometrics & Citations

Bibliometrics

Article Metrics

10
Total Citations
View Citations
439
Total Downloads

Downloads (Last 12 months)63
Downloads (Last 6 weeks)14

Reflects downloads up to 08 Feb 2025

Other Metrics

View Author Metrics

Citations

Cited By

Ochs MRistorcelli MD’Ambra ACasanova RPergandi J(2024)REVITALISE: viRtual bEhaVioral skIlls TrAining for pubLIc SpEakingProceedings of the 24th ACM International Conference on Intelligent Virtual Agents10.1145/3652988.3696202(1-3)Online publication date: 16-Sep-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3652988.3696202
Min YJeong J(2024)Public Speaking Q&A Practice with LLM-Generated Personas in Virtual Reality2024 IEEE International Symposium on Mixed and Augmented Reality Adjunct (ISMAR-Adjunct)10.1109/ISMAR-Adjunct64951.2024.00143(493-496)Online publication date: 21-Oct-2024
https://doi.org/10.1109/ISMAR-Adjunct64951.2024.00143
Al Owayyed MTielman MHartholt ASpecht MBrinkman W(2024)Agent-based social skills training systems: the ARTES architecture, interaction characteristics, learning theories and future outlooksBehaviour & Information Technology10.1080/0144929X.2024.2374891(1-28)Online publication date: 20-Jul-2024
https://doi.org/10.1080/0144929X.2024.2374891
Hurstak EOlafsson SO'Leary TCabral HPaasche-Orlow MBickmore TLugrin BLatoschik Mvon Mammen SKopp SPécune FPelachaud C(2023)Conversational Assessment of Mild Cognitive Impairment with Virtual AgentsProceedings of the 23rd ACM International Conference on Intelligent Virtual Agents10.1145/3570945.3607314(1-8)Online publication date: 19-Sep-2023
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3570945.3607314
Leong JPerteneder FRajvee MMaes P(2023)“Picture the Audience...”: Exploring Private AR Face Filters for Online Public SpeakingProceedings of the 2023 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems10.1145/3544548.3581039(1-13)Online publication date: 19-Apr-2023
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3544548.3581039
Forghani DGhafurian MRasouli SNehaniv CDautenhahn K(2023)What Do People Think of Social Robots and Voice Agents as Public Speaking Coaches?2023 32nd IEEE International Conference on Robot and Human Interactive Communication (RO-MAN)10.1109/RO-MAN57019.2023.10309583(996-1003)Online publication date: 28-Aug-2023
https://doi.org/10.1109/RO-MAN57019.2023.10309583
Murali PBickmore T(2023)Sharing Speaker Heart Rate with the Audience Elicits Empathy and Increases PersuasionPersuasive Technology10.1007/978-3-031-30933-5_1(3-21)Online publication date: 19-Apr-2023
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1007/978-3-031-30933-5_1
Li QLiu TLiu ZChai Y(2023)Emotionally intelligent virtual tour guide in handling group conflicts: Effect on user outcomesComputer Animation and Virtual Worlds10.1002/cav.215334:3-4Online publication date: 23-May-2023
https://doi.org/10.1002/cav.2153
Murali PNouraei FFallah MKearns ARebello KO'Leary TPerkins RJoseph NDedier JPaasche-Orlow MBickmore TMartinho CDias JCampos JHeylen D(2022)Training lay counselors with virtual agents to promote vaccinationProceedings of the 22nd ACM International Conference on Intelligent Virtual Agents10.1145/3514197.3549679(1-8)Online publication date: 6-Sep-2022
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3514197.3549679
Terzioglu YMurali PKimani EBickmore T(2022)Sharing the Spotlight: Co-presenting with a Humanoid Robot2022 17th ACM/IEEE International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction (HRI)10.1109/HRI53351.2022.9889400(551-560)Online publication date: 7-Mar-2022
https://doi.org/10.1109/HRI53351.2022.9889400

View Options

Login options

Check if you have access through your login credentials or your institution to get full access on this article.

Full Access

Get this Publication

View options

PDF

View or Download as a PDF file.

eReader

View online with eReader.

Figures

Tables

Media

View Table of Conten