Nonverbal Communication Channels Research Articles

Factors affecting mentoring services - cross-national perspective

Abstract The research aims at the identification of factors influencing mentoring services with a particular emphasis on the country of origin of the mentor and the mentee. The quantitative research was conducted in four Central and Eastern European countries, i.e., Bulgaria, Poland, Latvia and Lithuania and one Southern European country, Italy. The implemented methodology covered Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA) and reliability analysis, which were performed to identify factors influencing the process of communication in the mentor–mentee relationship. Moreover, to diagnose statistically significant differences between individual countries in terms of factors influencing the effectiveness of communication, the Kruskal–Wallis H Test and the Mann–Whitney U Test, as well as pair-wise comparisons, were used. Factors influencing communication in the mentor–mentee relationship are mentor traits, mentor’s personal background, mentor’s professional background, non-verbal communication channels, communication barriers, written communication channels, online communication, quality of content and the ability of content processing by the mentee. There are differences in the perception of individual factors in the analysed countries. So far, no cross-country comparison has been conducted of factors influencing mentoring services. As a direction for future research, more detailed research can be recommended concerning factors of the mentoring process in such countries as Lithuania, Latvia and Italy by developing separate models (or EFA) for mentors and mentees.

Detecting ulterior motives from verbal cues in group deliberations.

Forensic interviewing entails practitioners interviewing suspects to secure valid information and elicit confessions. Such interviews are often conducted in police stations but may also occur in field settings such as border crossings, security checkpoints, bus terminals, and sports venues. Because these real-world interviews often lack experimental control and ground truth, this investigation explored whether results of non-forensic interviews generalize to forensic ones. Organizational espionage was simulated to determine (1) what verbal signals distinguish truth from deception, (2) whether deception in groups aligns with deception in dyads, and (3) whether non-forensic venues can be generalized to forensic ones. Engaging in a mock hiring deliberation, participants (4-5 strangers) reviewed and discussed resumes of potential candidates. Surreptitiously, two group members assigned the role of "organizational spies" attempted to persuade the group to hire an inferior candidate. Each group member presented notes from an interview of "their" candidate, followed by a discussion of all candidates. Spies were to use any means possible, including deception, to persuade others to select their candidate. A financial incentive was offered for having one's candidate chosen. The interview reports and discussions were transcribed and analyzed with SPLICE, an automated text analysis program. Deceivers were perceived as less trustworthy than truth-tellers, especially when the naïve players won but overall, deceivers were difficult for non-spies to detect even though they were seen as less trustworthy than the naïve participants. Deceivers' language was more complex and exhibited an "echoing" strategy of repeating others' opinions. This collusion evolved naturally, without pre-planning. No other verbal differences were evident, which suggests that the difference between spies and non-spies was subtle and difficult for truth-tellers to spot. Whether deception can be successfully detected hinges on a variety of factors including the deceiver's skill to disguise and the detector's ability to sense and process information. Furthermore, the group dynamics and communication context subtly moderate how deception manifests and influence the accuracy of detecting ulterior motives. Our future investigations could encompass non-verbal communication channels and verbal patterns rooted in content, thereby providing a more comprehensive understanding of deception detection.

Subjective experience, self-efficacy, and motivation of professional football referees during the COVID-19 pandemic

The present multi-study article investigates the subjective experience of professional football (a.k.a. soccer) referees and players during the COVID-19 pandemic and the so-called ghost games (i.e., games without supporters). Referees from the Austrian Football Association completed questionnaires inquiring about self-efficacy, motivation, and general personal observations and perceptions (e.g., arousal or confidence). In addition, two players and one referee in the Austrian Football Bundesliga were interviewed retrospectively regarding their subjective experience during ghost games and the effects of emotions on behavior and performance using semi-structured, video-taped interviews. Results of the referee survey indicate that the most profound differences between regular games and ghost games lie in the domain of intrinsic motivation and multiple aspects of subjective experience. Specifically, the experience in ghost games compared with regular games was reported by referees as being significantly less motivating, less excited/tense, less emotional, less focused, and overall, more negative, despite being easier to referee and the players behaving more positively. Qualitative analyses of the video-taped interview footage indicated (i) substantial inter-individual variability regarding the extent of the effect of the empty stadiums on the subjective experience of emotions, (ii) consequently, different strategies to regulate emotions and arousal from suboptimal to optimal levels, both before and during competition, and (iii) interactions between reported emotions, arousal, motivation, self-confidence, behavior and performance on the pitch. In addition, non-verbal expressions of emotion were captured using fully automated AI-software that coded facial movements during interviews. The results of this exploratory facial expression analysis revealed varying degrees of arousal and valence in relation to the content of the statements during the interviews, demonstrating the convergent validity of our findings. Our findings contribute to the growing literature on the effects of football games without fans during the COVID-19 pandemic and provide insights into the subjective experience of professional football referees. Concerning referees and players alike, emotions are investigated as potential processes related to home-field advantage and performance in professional football by means of a multi-methods approach. Further, the combination of qualitative and quantitative measures—as well as verbal and non-verbal communication channels—can deepen our understanding of the emotional influence of (missing) spectators on the subjective experience and the behavior of sports professionals is discussed.

Postural and Gestural Synchronization, Sequential Imitation, and Mirroring Predict Perceived Coupling of Dancing Dyads

Body movement is a primary nonverbal communication channel in humans. Coordinated social behaviors, such as dancing together, encourage multifarious rhythmic and interpersonally coupled movements from which observers can extract socially and contextually relevant information. The investigation of relations between visual social perception and kinematic motor coupling is important for social cognition. Perceived coupling of dyads spontaneously dancing to pop music has been shown to be highly driven by the degree of frontal orientation between dancers. The perceptual salience of other aspects, including postural congruence, movement frequencies, time-delayed relations, and horizontal mirroring remains, however, uncertain. In a motion capture study, 90 participant dyads moved freely to 16 musical excerpts from eight musical genres, while their movements were recorded using optical motion capture. A total from 128 recordings from 8 dyads maximally facing each other were selected to generate silent 8-s animations. Three kinematic features describing simultaneous and sequential full body coupling were extracted from the dyads. In an online experiment, the animations were presented to 432 observers, who were asked to rate perceived similarity and interaction between dancers. We found dyadic kinematic coupling estimates to be higher than those obtained from surrogate estimates, providing evidence for a social dimension of entrainment in dance. Further, we observed links between perceived similarity and coupling of both slower simultaneous horizontal gestures and posture bounding volumes. Perceived interaction, on the other hand, was more related to coupling of faster simultaneous gestures and to sequential coupling. Also, dyads who were perceived as more coupled tended to mirror their pair's movements.

Touch and voice have different advantages in perceiving positive and negative emotions.

Previous research has revealed that several emotions can be perceived via touch. What advantages does touch have over other nonverbal communication channels? In our study, we compared the perception of emotions from touch with that from voice to examine the advantages of each channel at the emotional valence level. In our experiment, the encoder expressed 12 different emotions by touching the decoder's arm or uttering a syllable /e/, and the decoder judged the emotion. The results showed that the categorical average accuracy of negative emotions was higher for voice than for touch, whereas that of positive emotions was marginally higher for touch than for voice. These results suggest that different channels (touch and voice) have different advantages for the perception of positive and negative emotions.

The Facial Width-To-Height Ratio is Unrelated to Aggressive Behaviour in Indonesian People

As a channel of non-verbal communication, faces can give information such as mate attraction, intelligence, and aggressivity. Aggressivity is a character to dominate, protect position, and fight over resources. Several aggressive behaviours in humans are, for example, anger, hostility, physical aggression, and verbal aggression. Previous studies in western society showed that aggressivity could be perceived from the faces. We tested 100 Indonesian males ranging from 19-51 years old to fill out the Buss-Perry Aggression Questionnaire (BPAQ) to measure the aggression scale. The mean of their BPAQ scales (total aggression, anger, hostility, physical aggression, and verbal aggression) were 72.44±10.84, 17.37±3.97, 21.38±4.53, 18.97±4.65, 14.72±2.68, respectively. The average facial photograph was generated based on the min-Q1 (Low Aggressivity (LA)) and Q3-max (High Aggressivity (HA)) BPAQ scale. Next, the aggressivity of averaged LA and HA faces was evaluated by raters. The raters consisted of 145 males and 213 females randomly recruited, ranging from 17 to 67 years old. The facial width-to-height (fWHR) ratio between the average faces of the Low-Aggression face and the High-Aggression face was insignificant. This study concluded that Indonesian people could not perceive aggressivity in their faces.

Do you believe in prophecies? Self-fulfilling prophecies in nurses: A descriptive qualitative study

Purpose. The study aims at revealing the role and meaning of perceived leader expectations and beliefs in nurses’ high performance. Study design. This qualitative descriptive study included ten nurses and two supervisors who were selected using purposive sampling technique and theirs two supervisors. Data were collected by semi-structured interviewing and evaluated using content analysis. Findings. The data revealed four themes of the Pygmalion effect on nurses’ performance, and these themes represented four consecutive steps of the pygmalion effect. These themes stated as the “Pygmalion process” were conceptualized as 1) formation, 2) transmission, 3) perception and internalization, 4) reflection, respectively. Leaders’ expectations about nurses’ performance and success, and their beliefs about nurses’ abilities were found to be important for nurses. When these beliefs and expectations were perceived by nurses, they resulted in high performance. Nurses, who perceived positive expectations conveyed by leaders through different channels, had the tendency to respond to these expectations with high performance. This expectation effect emerged within a four-stage process, and this process included the emergence of the expectation which was formed before the first impression, and the steps of a complex process transmitted through many verbal, nonverbal, formal and informal communication channels. Research limitations. the small number of participants in the study can be considered as the first limitation. The sample size should be increased with more participants (study groups) to develop more comprehensive understanding with future studies. Since the data of the study is based on selfreports, possible response bias can be considered as another potential risk, and this situation was tried to be overcome by interviewing the head nurses as well as the nurses. Considering that positive leader expectations can be an antecedent to different positive organizational outcomes as some other recent studies showed, searching for the relationship of the Pygmalion effect with different outcomeswill contribute to the literature. This study conducted with the nurses examines the Pygmalion effect of the leaders’ positive expectation. For future studies, holistic research can be carried out by choosing healthcare employees using the expectation effect, and other versions such as Galateas and Golem. Value of the results. This is a qualitative study on the relationship between perceived leader expectations and beliefs in nurses’ high performance by evaluating the role of Pygmalion effect.

Affective Action and Interaction Recognition by Multi-View Representation Learning from Handcrafted Low-Level Skeleton Features.

Human feelings expressed through verbal (e.g. voice) and non-verbal communication channels (e.g. face or body) can influence either human actions or interactions. In the literature, most of the attention was given to facial expressions for the analysis of emotions conveyed through non-verbal behaviors. Despite this, psychology highlights that the body is an important indicator of the human affective state in performing daily life activities. Therefore, this paper presents a novel method for affective action and interaction recognition from videos, exploiting multi-view representation learning and only full-body handcrafted characteristics selected following psychological and proxemic studies. Specifically, 2D skeletal data are extracted from RGB video sequences to derive diverse low-level skeleton features, i.e. multi-views, modeled through the bag-of-visual-words clustering approach generating a condition-related codebook. In this way, each affective action and interaction within a video can be represented as a frequency histogram of codewords. During the learning phase, for each affective class, training samples are used to compute its global histogram of codewords stored in a database and later used for the recognition task. In the recognition phase, the video frequency histogram representation is matched against the database of class histograms and classified as the closest affective class in terms of Euclidean distance. The effectiveness of the proposed system is evaluated on a specifically collected dataset containing 6 emotion for both actions and interactions, on which the proposed system obtains 93.64% and 90.83% accuracy, respectively. In addition, the devised strategy also achieves in line performances with other literature works based on deep learning when tested on a public collection containing 6 emotions plus a neutral state, demonstrating the effectiveness of the presented approach and confirming the findings in psychological and proxemic studies.

ALGORITHMS OF THE UNIVERSITY PROFESSOR’S IMAGE IMPROVING IN A CONTEXT OF PEDAGOGICAL BRANDING

The article emphasizes the need for purposeful formation of the university professor’s image as an important condition for the formation of his personal brand. The relationship between concepts “the image of profession” and “the prestige of profession” is specified. The author specifies four types of images that interact in a university professor’s professional activity – ideal, desired, real, and mirror. Ideal image reflects the features of an exemplary specialist, desired image shows the results of comparing constructs of ideal image with the professional potential of the brand holder to bring them to maximum compliance, real image highlights the current image of the specialist in the imagination of the target audience, and mirror image is a manifestation of self-image, based on the subject’s own perception of the real image of the university professor. “Values shared by the individual” and “values-attitudes” as potential guidelines for university professor’s branding initiatives are differentiated in the article. It is argued the inexpediency of the fact that some scientists recognize the habitual image of a university professor’s image as a dominant element. It is proved that determinants of university professor’s image improving in the context of pedagogical branding are: extrapolation of positive properties of the university professor’s profession image to the professor’s image; regular fixation of systematically achieved intermediate goals, the number and sequence of which clearly correspond to the specifics of movement to the goal of branding; activation of the proxematic channel of non-verbal communication in learning, as well as the paralinguistic and extralinguistic components of paraverbal communication with the student target audience. Three algorithms of purposeful university professor’s image improvement in a context of pedagogical branding are substantiated. The effectiveness of the application of these algorithms in university professors’ professional activity has been tested through a pedagogical experiment.
 Keywords: image; university professor; image of profession; prestige of profession; personal brand; algorithm; brand-communication; pedagogical branding.

Verbal, Non-Verbal Communication and Body Language in Part A of Erotokritos by Vitsentzos Kornaros


 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 This paper studies verbal and non-verbal communication as this is captured in part A of the narrative poem Erotokritos by Vitsentzos Kornaros. First, the paper presents the basic characteristics of the Cretan Renaissance that inspired the author. Then a brief reference is made to the genre of the masterpiece and its classification as a novel. Within the framework of this study, the focus was placed on investigating the content of the verbal communication, as this is identified in the dialogues taking place between the main characters-protagonists of the romance. Moreover, the discussions between Erotokritos and his trusted friend Polidoros as well as between Aretusa and her nurse Frosini are also studied. The verbal communication helps understand the characters’ way of thinking and leads to conclusions about social perceptions and public morality concerning love, which is prevalent in the poem. Finally, reference is made to important non-verbal communication channels contained in the text. More specifically, important references to the visual, motor, thermal and tactile communication channel have been identified. The study shows that non-verbal signs express feelings, which are difficult to express in words. As these signs contribute to the plot, they describe the interaction between the protagonists and disclose their feelings in every scene of the play.
 
 
 
 

Noi descoperiri în vechi colecții: un vas antropomorf de tip „dublu Janus” descoperit la Trușești / New discoveries in old collections: A “Double Janus” anthropomorphic vessel discovered in Trușești

The main purpose of our study is to (re) introduce into the scholarly circuit – with all the necessary details – an anthropomorphic vessel of a particular type discovered in Trușești-Țuguieta (Botoșani County) more than six decades ago (pl. 1-2). Its correct typological description and classification brings a new perspective on the symbolism embedded in these vessels, as an important category of sacred objects, which have a hermeneutic potential still not completely unveiled.Published in the site monograph as a vessel with a “lobed body” , the container is an anthropomorphic vessel regarded up to the present as one of a kind within the archaeological discoveries in the Cucuteni-Trypillia area. Viewed from any of its four sides, the vessel depicts the front of a female anthropomorphic figure. Specifically, it depicts the abdominal area and hips of four female figures positioned back-to-back. The female shapes are rendered in a typical representation for the Cucuteni anthropomorphic vessels, with emphasis on the abdomen and groin area, on the wide-shaped hips merges with the rest of the vessel. Referring to the typological classification made previously by us for some of the anthropomorphic vessels with a quasi-symmetrical profile, regarded as double-sided vessels of “janiform type” (pl. 3/3-4; 4), one can assert that this four-sided container is of “double Janus” type, being characterized by a feature that has been defined as an “image multiplication”.The presentation of the “double Janus”-type vessel of Trușești also gives us an opportunity to review the known archaeological data regarding the finding contexts of anthropomorphic vessels, of Cucuteni or from the contemporary and neighboring cultural areas. Their analysis allowed us to notice certain patterns of usage and abandonment of these containers, as well as the high frequency of certain associations with other types of rare artifacts, many indicated in archaeological studies as “cult pieces”. The synthesized data support the role of such anthropomorphic vessels as paraphernalia, artifacts that were used in ritual scenographies with a precisely defined role (which today can only be guessed), which is also polysemantic, being a special channel of nonverbal communication.

Individual's Social Perception of Virtual Avatars Embodied with Their Habitual Facial Expressions and Facial Appearance.

With the prevalence of virtual avatars and the recent emergence of metaverse technology, there has been an increase in users who express their identity through an avatar. The research community focused on improving the realistic expressions and non-verbal communication channels of virtual characters to create a more customized experience. However, there is a lack in the understanding of how avatars can embody a user’s signature expressions (i.e., user’s habitual facial expressions and facial appearance) that would provide an individualized experience. Our study focused on identifying elements that may affect the user’s social perception (similarity, familiarity, attraction, liking, and involvement) of customized virtual avatars engineered considering the user’s facial characteristics. We evaluated the participant’s subjective appraisal of avatars that embodied the participant’s habitual facial expressions or facial appearance. Results indicated that participants felt that the avatar that embodied their habitual expressions was more similar to them than the avatar that did not. Furthermore, participants felt that the avatar that embodied their appearance was more familiar than the avatar that did not. Designers should be mindful about how people perceive individuated virtual avatars in order to accurately represent the user’s identity and help users relate to their avatar.

What Do Car Horns Say? An Overview of the Non-Verbal Communication of Horn Honking

The current study aims at shedding light on horn honking as an effective channel of non-verbal communication that expresses far more meanings than just aggression and road-related messages. An overview of the use of horn honking in ten different countries is given. The overview shows that horn honking has indeed proven itself as cultural phenomenon essential in the daily lives of many people. The car horn is much more than a mere tool of warning for danger or complaining about some wrong. Many drivers use horn honking as a language, Morse codes, or a medium of communication to express a variety of meanings some of which reinforce social relationships. The overview is discussed from a cultural point of view. A recommendation for more attention to this neglected channel has been made. It needs to be listed as a channel of non-verbal communication or at least be considered as a sub channel of the physical environment.

Creolized Text as a Polylingual Phenomenon

In oral speech communication is advisable to distinguish between verbal and non-verbal communication channel. The verbal channel is served by the sounds of a particular ethnic language, with which the meanings of words formed in another ethnic culture are associated. The verbal channel broadcasts non-linguistic signs: height, strength, pace, rhythm of the speakers voice. These signs, used intentionally or unintentionally, carry, regardless of the semantics of language means, non-verbal information about the speaker, about his attitude to the interlocutor, to the subject of communication, to the speaker himself. The study revealed the contribution of the speakers gender to the quality of the sounding (spoken) text in comparison with the qualities of the same text in written performance.

When Agents Become Partners: A Review of the Role the Implicit Plays in the Interaction with Artificial Social Agents

The way we interact with computers has significantly changed over recent decades. However, interaction with computers still falls behind human to human interaction in terms of seamlessness, effortlessness, and satisfaction. We argue that simultaneously using verbal, nonverbal, explicit, implicit, intentional, and unintentional communication channels addresses these three aspects of the interaction process. To better understand what has been done in the field of Human Computer Interaction (HCI) in terms of incorporating the type channels mentioned above, we reviewed the literature on implicit nonverbal interaction with a specific emphasis on the interaction between humans on the one side, and robot and virtual humans on the other side. These Artificial Social Agents (ASA) are increasingly used as advanced tools for solving not only physical but also social tasks. In the literature review, we identify domains of interaction between humans and artificial social agents that have shown exponential growth over the years. The review highlights the value of incorporating implicit interaction capabilities in Human Agent Interaction (HAI) which we believe will lead to satisfying human and artificial social agent team performance. We conclude the article by presenting a case study of a system that harnesses subtle nonverbal, implicit interaction to increase the state of relaxation in users. This “Virtual Human Breathing Relaxation System” works on the principle of physiological synchronisation between a human and a virtual, computer-generated human. The active entrainment concept behind the relaxation system is generic and can be applied to other human agent interaction domains of implicit physiology-based interaction.

Recognition and Naming of the Sentence Content in Deaf Children Trough Verbal and Neverbal Approach

The aim of the research is to determine the effects on the recognition and naming of certain sentence structures through a verbal and non-verbal approach, or through the use of a verbal and non-verbal communication channel. The study was conducted on a sample of 30 deaf pupils at age from 11 to 14 years. As a measurement instrument, a modified image description test was used. The test consisted of six complexes, illustrated sentences, in which the actions and subjects performing certain actions are shown in the picture sequence in a way that deaf children understand. The descriptive analysis method was used for data processing. Measures of central tendencies and variations have been made. Testing the difference between verbal and non-verbal approach was performed by t-test. The correlation between the chronological age and the recognition and naming of the spoken structures were verified through the non-verbal approach. The results of the research have shown that respondents have achieved better results in recognizing and naming spoken content using the non-verbal communication channel, that there is a statistically significant difference in the use of verbal and non-verbal communication approaches in recognizing and naming spoken content, and that there is a high correlation between the chronological age of respondents and recognizing and naming of spoken content through a non-verbal approach

Recognition and naming of the sentence content in deaf children through verbal and non-verbal approach

The aim of the research is to determine the effects on the recognition and naming of certain sentence structures through a verbal and non-verbal approach, or through the use of a verbal and non-verbal communication channel. The study was conducted on a sample of 30 deaf pupils at age from 11 to 14 years. As a measurement instrument, a modified image description test was used. The test consisted of six complexes, illustrated sentences, in which the actions and subjects performing certain actions are shown in the picture sequence in a way that deaf children understand. The descriptive analysis method was used for data processing. Measures of central tendencies and variations have been made. Testing the difference between verbal and non-verbal approach was performed by t-test. The correlation between the chronological age and the recognition and naming of the spoken structures were verified through the non-verbal approach. The results of the research have shown that respondents have achieved better results in recognizing and naming spoken content using the non-verbal communication channel, that there is a statistically significant difference in the use of verbal and non-verbal communication approaches in recognizing and naming spoken content, and that there is a high correlation between the chronological age of respondents and recognizing and naming of spoken content through a non-verbal approach.

Nonverbal Communication in German-Albanian Cultural Contrast

This article explores the nonverbal communication by comparing the cultural features of Albanian (in Albania and Kosovo) and German cultures; also comparing the inter-cultural features in Albania and Kosovo, respectively. The human communication is beyond language: nonverbal communication includes all kinds of human behavior that are not strictly linguistic but convey meaning, i.e., a set of behaviors (e.g., gestures) with a specific referential value and a function. We focus on seven of the most important channels of nonverbal communication in a contrastive Albanian-German perspective: proxemics, eye contact, facial expressions, body language, touching, physical appearance, the extra-linguistic field. The field of nonverbal communication is often considered inferior in relation to verbal communication (comprised of language habits, grammar, lexicon, etc.). Although communication between members of two different cultures requires the knowledge of a foreign language, their communication actually begins before any words are uttered.

Sign Language Translation Using Deep Convolutional Neural Networks

Sign language is a natural, visually oriented and non-verbal communication channel between people that facilitates communication through facial/bodily expressions, postures and a set of gestures. It is basically used for communication with people who are deaf or hard of hearing. In order to understand such communication quickly and accurately, the design of a successful sign language translation system is considered in this paper. The proposed system includes object detection and classification stages. Firstly, Single Shot Multi Box Detection (SSD) architecture is utilized for hand detection, then a deep learning structure based on the Inception v3 plus Support Vector Machine (SVM) that combines feature extraction and classification stages is proposed to constructively translate the detected hand gestures. A sign language fingerspelling dataset is used for the design of the proposed model. The obtained results and comparative analysis demonstrate the efficiency of using the proposed hybrid structure in sign language translation.

Behaving socially with a virtual human role-player in a simulated counseling session

Visual attention is an essential social element in face-to-face conversations between people. The Army is now using virtual environments with virtual human role-players to provide for the development and practice of leader counseling skills. While literature indicates that virtual humans positively impact learning outcomes, this research contributes to the understanding of how people interact with virtual humans. Specifically, the research investigates a person’s social behavior toward a virtual human in a simulated counseling session. Utilizing a computer-based training environment, this research tracked visual attention toward and acceptance of a virtual human role-player by 120 military counselors. Behavior moderators included attentional influences on the counselor from the level of expression and full-body or close-up views of the virtual human. Results indicate trainees do practice appropriate social attention when the virtual human is speaking. Results also indicate counselors attended to an active more than a static full-body view indicating there is value in nonverbal communication channels. Switching from a full-body to a close-up view did not result in significant changes of the counselor’s visual attention. Further, the research indicates switching views may undermine the perception of a natural interaction. Counselors considered the experience useful. The research suggests study and design considerations to enhance future social skills training environments.