research-article

Towards building a virtual counselor: modeling nonverbal behavior during intimate self-disclosure

Authors:

Jonathan Gratch,

Louis-Philippe MorencyAuthors Info & Claims

AAMAS '12: Proceedings of the 11th International Conference on Autonomous Agents and Multiagent Systems - Volume 1

Pages 63 - 70

Published: 04 June 2012 Publication History

Abstract

Nonverbal behavior is considered critical for indicating intimacy and is important when designing a social virtual agent such as a counselor. One key research question is how to properly express intimate self-disclosure. In this paper we present an extensive study of human nonverbal behavior during intimate self-disclosure. This is an important milestone in creating a virtual counselor. A study of video interactions between human participants demonstrated that people display more head tilts and pauses when they revealed highly intimate information about themselves; they presented more head nods and eye gazes during less intimate sharing. An implementation of these behaviors in a virtual agent suggests that people tend to perceive head tilts, pauses and gaze aversion by the agent as conveying intimate self-disclosure. These findings are important for future research with virtual counselors and other social agents.

References

[1]

Altman, I. & Taylor, D. 1973. Social penetration: Development of interpersonal relationships. Holt McDougal.

[2]

Argyle, M., & Dean, J. 1965. Eye-contact, distance, and affiliation. Sociometry, 28, pp. 289--304.

[3]

Bavelas, J. B., Coates, L., Johnson, T. 2000. Listeners as conarrators. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 79(6), 941--952.

[4]

Bee, N., Wagner, J., André, E., Vogt, T., Charles, F., Pizzi, D. & Cavazza, M. 2010. Discovering Eye Gaze Behavior during Human-Agent Conversation in an Interactive Storytelling Application. In: 12^th International Conference on Multimodal Interfaces and 7th Workshop on Machine Learning for Multimodal Interaction.

Digital Library

[5]

Bickmore, T. 2005. Ethical Issues in Using Relational Agents for Older Adults. Paper presented at the AAAI Fall Symposium on Caring Machines: AI in Eldercare, Washington, DC.

[6]

Bickmore, T., Schulman, D., & Yin, L. 2009. Engagement vs. Deceit: Virtual Humans with Human Autobiographies. In: Proc. 9^th International Conference on Intelligent Virtual Agents.

Digital Library

[7]

Buschmeier, H., Bergmann, K. & Kopp, S. 2010. Adaptive Expressiveness -- Virtual Conversational Agents That Can Align to Their Interaction Partner. In: Proc. 9^th International Conference on Autonomous Agents and Multiagent Systems. Toronto, Canada.

Digital Library

[8]

Cassell, J., Pelachaud, C., Badler, N., Steedman, M., Achorn, B., Becket, T., Douville, B., Prevost, S., & Stone, M. 1994. Animated conversation: rule-based generation of facial expression, gesture & spoken intonation for multiple conversational agents. In: Proceedings of 21st Annual Conference on Computer Graphics and Interactive Technologies SIGGRAPH'94.

Digital Library

[9]

Duncan, S. Jr. 1974. On the Structure of Speaker-Auditor Interaction during Speaking Turns. Language in Society, 3(2), pp. 161--180.

[10]

Cacioppo, J. T., Petty, R. E., Losch, M. E., & Kim, H. S. 1986. Electromyographic activity over facial muscle regions can differentiate the valence and intensity of affective reactions. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 50, pp. 260--268.

[11]

Edinger, J. & Patterson, M. 1983. Nonverbal Involvement and Social Control. Psychological Bulletin 1983, vol. 93, no. 1, pp. 30--56.

[12]

Ekman, P. 1992. An argument for basic emotions. Cognition & Emotion 6(3), 169--200.

[13]

Exline, R., Gray, D., & Schuette, D. 1965. Visual Behavior in a Dyad as Affected by Interview Content and Sex of Respondent. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 1965, vol. 1, no. 3, pp. 201--209.

[14]

Farber, B. 2006. Self-Disclosure in Psychotherapy. Guilford, New York.

[15]

Heylen, D. 2006. Head gestures, gaze and the principles of conversational structure. International Journal of Humanoid Robotics, 3(3), pp. 241--267.

[16]

Jonsdottir, G. R., Thorisson, K. R., & Nivel, E. 2008. Learning Smooth, Human-Like Turntaking in Realtime Dialogue. In: Proceedings of International Conference on Intelligent Virtual Agent, Tokyo, Japan.

Digital Library

[17]

Kang, S. & Gratch, J. 2010. Virtual Humans Elicit Socially Anxious Interactants' Verbal Self-Disclosure. Journal of Computer Animation and Virtual Worlds, 21(3--4), pp. 473--482.

Digital Library

[18]

Knapp, M. & Hall, J. 2010. Nonverbal Communication in Human Interaction. Wadsworth | Cengage Learning, Boston.

[19]

Kraemer N. C. 2008. Human behavior in military contexts, chap. Nonverbal Communication, pp. 150--188. Washington: The National Academies Press.

[20]

Krippendorff, K. 2004. Content Analysis, an Introduction to its Methodology, 2nd Edition. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

[21]

Mattman, M., Gratch, J., & Marsella, S. 2005. Natural behavior of a listening agent. In: Proceedings of Interactional Conference on Intelligent Virtual Agents, Kos, Greece.

Digital Library

[22]

Moon, Y: Intimate exchanges 2000. Using computers to elicit self- disclosure from consumers. Journal of Consumer Research, Vol. 26, No. 4, 323--339.

[23]

O'Leary, M. & Gallois, C. 1985. The last ten turns: Behavior and sequencing in friends' and strangers' conversation findings. Journal of Nonverbal Behavior 9(1), Spring 1985, Human Sciences Press.

[24]

Pelachaud, C. 1996. Simulation of face-to-face interaction. In: Proceedings of the workshop on Advanced Visual Interfaces, pp. 269--271, Gubbio, Italy.

Digital Library

[25]

Philippot, P., Feldman, R., & Coats, E. 2003. The Role of Nonverbal Behavior in Clinical Settings. In: Philippot, P., Feldman, R., & Coats, E. (eds.) Nonverbal Behavior in Clinical Settings. Oxford University Press, New York.

[26]

Tickle-Degnen, L. & Gavett, E. 2003. Changes in nonverbal behavior during the development of therapeutic relationships. In: Philippot, P., Feldman, R., & Coats, E. (eds.) Nonverbal Behavior in Clinical Settings. Oxford University Press, New York.

[27]

Trees, A. & Manusov, V.: Managing Face Concerns in Criticism Integrating Nonverbal Behaviors as a Dimension of Politeness in Female Friendship Dyads, http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1468-2958.1998.tb00431.x/pdf.

[28]

Tabachnick, B. & Fidell, L. 2001. Using Multivariate Statistics. Allyn & Bacon.

Digital Library

Cited By

Admoni HScassellati B(2017)Social eye gaze in human-robot interactionJournal of Human-Robot Interaction10.5898/JHRI.6.1.Admoni6:1(25-63)Online publication date: 26-May-2017
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.5898/JHRI.6.1.Admoni
Cafaro AVilhjálmsson HBickmore T(2016)First Impressions in Human--Agent Virtual EncountersACM Transactions on Computer-Human Interaction10.1145/294032523:4(1-40)Online publication date: 13-Aug-2016
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/2940325
Baur TMehlmann GDamian ILingenfelser FWagner JLugrin BAndré EGebhard P(2015)Context-Aware Automated Analysis and Annotation of Social Human--Agent InteractionsACM Transactions on Interactive Intelligent Systems10.1145/27649215:2(1-33)Online publication date: 30-Jun-2015
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/2764921
Show More Cited By

Index Terms

Towards building a virtual counselor: modeling nonverbal behavior during intimate self-disclosure
1. Applied computing
  1. Law, social and behavioral sciences
    1. Psychology
2. Computing methodologies
  1. Artificial intelligence
    1. Distributed artificial intelligence
      1. Intelligent agents

Recommendations

Multimodal Analysis and Estimation of Intimate Self-Disclosure
ICMI '19: 2019 International Conference on Multimodal Interaction

Self-disclosure to others has a proven benefit for one’s mental health. It is shown that disclosure to computers can be similarly beneficial for emotional and psychological well-being. In this paper, we analyzed verbal and nonverbal behavior associated ...
Virtual humans elicit socially anxious interactants' verbal self-disclosure
CASA' 2010 Special Issue

We explored the relationship between interactants' social anxiety and the interactional fidelity of virtual humans. We specifically addressed whether the contingent non-verbal feedback of virtual humans affects the association between interactants' ...
The effect of avatar realism of virtual humans on self-disclosure in anonymous social interactions
CHI EA '10: CHI '10 Extended Abstracts on Human Factors in Computing Systems

In this paper, we illustrate progress in research designed to investigate interactants' self-disclosure when they communicate with virtual humans or real humans in computer-mediated interactions. We explored the effect of the combination of avatar ...

Comments

Please enable JavaScript to view thecomments powered by Disqus.

Information & Contributors

Information

Published In

cover image ACM Other conferences

AAMAS '12: Proceedings of the 11th International Conference on Autonomous Agents and Multiagent Systems - Volume 1

June 2012

592 pages

ISBN:0981738117

General Chairs:
Wiebe van der Hoek
University of Liverpool, UK
,
Lin Padgham
RMIT University, Australia
,
Program Chairs:
Vincent Conitzer
Duke University
,
Michael Winikoff
University of Otago, New Zealand

Sponsors

The International Foundation for Autonomous Agents and Multiagent Systems: The International Foundation for Autonomous Agents and Multiagent Systems

In-Cooperation

SIGAI: ACM Special Interest Group on Artificial Intelligence

Publisher

International Foundation for Autonomous Agents and Multiagent Systems

Richland, SC

Publication History

Published: 04 June 2012

Check for updates

Author Tags

Qualifiers

Research-article

Conference

AAMAS 12

Sponsor:

The International Foundation for Autonomous Agents and Multiagent Systems

AAMAS 12: International Conference on Autonomous Agents and Multiagent Systems

June 4 - 8, 2012

Valencia, Spain

Acceptance Rates

Overall Acceptance Rate 1,155 of 5,036 submissions, 23%

Contributors

Other Metrics

View Article Metrics

Bibliometrics & Citations

Bibliometrics

Article Metrics

8
Total Citations
View Citations
279
Total Downloads

Downloads (Last 12 months)7
Downloads (Last 6 weeks)1

Reflects downloads up to 22 Nov 2024

Other Metrics

View Author Metrics

Citations

Cited By

Admoni HScassellati B(2017)Social eye gaze in human-robot interactionJournal of Human-Robot Interaction10.5898/JHRI.6.1.Admoni6:1(25-63)Online publication date: 26-May-2017
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.5898/JHRI.6.1.Admoni
Cafaro AVilhjálmsson HBickmore T(2016)First Impressions in Human--Agent Virtual EncountersACM Transactions on Computer-Human Interaction10.1145/294032523:4(1-40)Online publication date: 13-Aug-2016
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/2940325
Baur TMehlmann GDamian ILingenfelser FWagner JLugrin BAndré EGebhard P(2015)Context-Aware Automated Analysis and Annotation of Social Human--Agent InteractionsACM Transactions on Interactive Intelligent Systems10.1145/27649215:2(1-33)Online publication date: 30-Jun-2015
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/2764921
Gebhard PBaur TDamian IMehlmann GWagner JAndré EBazzan AHuhns MLomuscio AScerri P(2014)Exploring interaction strategies for virtual characters to induce stress in simulated job interviewsProceedings of the 2014 international conference on Autonomous agents and multi-agent systems10.5555/2615731.2615838(661-668)Online publication date: 5-May-2014
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.5555/2615731.2615838
Park SShoemark PMorency LKuflik TStock OChai JKrüger A(2014)Toward crowdsourcing micro-level behavior annotationsProceedings of the 19th international conference on Intelligent User Interfaces10.1145/2557500.2557512(37-46)Online publication date: 24-Feb-2014
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/2557500.2557512
Meguro TMinami YHigashinaka RDohsaka K(2014)Learning to control listening-oriented dialogue using partially observable markov decision processesACM Transactions on Speech and Language Processing (TSLP)10.1145/251314510:4(1-20)Online publication date: 3-Jan-2014
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/2513145
Park SEpps JChen FOviatt SMase KSears AJokinen KSchuller B(2013)Persuasiveness in social multimediaProceedings of the 15th ACM on International conference on multimodal interaction10.1145/2522848.2532198(321-324)Online publication date: 9-Dec-2013
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/2522848.2532198
Park SMohammadi GArtstein RMorency LChen KChu WLarson MOoi W(2012)Crowdsourcing micro-level multimedia annotationsProceedings of the ACM multimedia 2012 workshop on Crowdsourcing for multimedia10.1145/2390803.2390816(29-34)Online publication date: 29-Oct-2012
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/2390803.2390816

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.

Media

Figures

Other

Tables

View Table of Contents