Virtual Human Design Research Articles

From Avatars to Agents: Self-Related Cues Through Embodiment and Personalization Affect Body Perception in Virtual Reality.

Our work investigates the influence of self-related cues in the design of virtual humans on body perception in virtual reality. In a $2\times 2$ mixed design, 64 participants faced photorealistic virtual humans either as a motion-synchronized embodied avatar or as an autonomous moving agent, appearing subsequently with a personalized and generic texture. Our results unveil that self-related cues through embodiment and personalization yield an individual and complemented increase in participants' sense of embodiment and self-identification towards the virtual human. Different body weight modification and estimation tasks further showed an impact of both factors on participants' body weight perception. Additional analyses revealed that the participant's body mass index predicted body weight estimations in all conditions and that participants' self-esteem and body shape concerns correlated with different body weight perception results. Hence, we have demonstrated the occurrence of double standards through induced self-related cues in virtual human perception, especially through embodiment.

How we trust, perceive, and learn from virtual humans: The influence of voice quality

Research has shown that creating environments in which social cues are present (social agency) benefits learning. One way to create these environments is to incorporate a virtual human as a pedagogical agent in computer-based learning environments. However, essential questions remain about virtual human design, such as what voice should the virtual human use to communicate. Furthermore, to date research in the education literature around virtual humans has largely ignored one potentially salient construct – trust. This study examines how the quality of a virtual human's voice influences learning, perceptions, and trust in the virtual human. Results of on an online study show that the voice quality did not significantly influence learning, but it did influence trust and learners' other perceptions of the virtual human. This study, consistent with recent work around the voice effect, questions the efficacy of the voice effect and highlights areas of research around trust to further extend social agency theory in virtual human based learning environments.

LESSONS FROM EMOTION PSYCHOLOGY FOR THE DESIGN OF LIFELIKE CHARACTERS

ABSTRACT This special issue describes a number of applications that utilize lifelike characters that teach indirectly, by playing some role in a social interaction with a user. The design of such systems reflects a compromise between competing, sometimes unarticulated, demands: They must realistically exhibit the behaviors and characteristics of their role, they must facilitate the desired learning, and they must work within the limitations of current technology, and there is little theoretical or empirical guidance on the impact of these compromises on learning. Our perspective on this problem is shaped by our interest in the role of emotion and emotional behaviors in such forms of learning. In recent years, there has been an explosion of interest in the role of emotion in the design of virtual humans. The techniques and motivations underlying these various efforts can seem, from an outsider's perspective, as bewildering and multifaceted as the concept of emotion itself is generally accused of being. Drawing on insights from emotion psychology, this article attempts to clarify for the designers of educational agents the various theoretical perspectives on the concept of emotion with the aim of giving guidance to designers of educational agents.