The Impact of a Character Posture Model on the Communication of Affect in an Immersive Virtual Environment

Abstract

Abstract-This paper presents the quantitative and qualitative findings from an experiment designed to evaluate a developing model of affective postures for full-body virtual characters in immersive virtual environments (IVEs). Forty-nine participants were each requested to explore a virtual environment by asking two virtual characters for instructions. The participants used a CAVE-like system to explore the environment. Participant responses and their impression of the virtual characters were evaluated through a wide variety of both quantitative and qualitative methods. Combining a controlled experimental approach with various data-collection methods provided a number of advantages such as providing a reason to the quantitative results. The quantitative results indicate that posture plays an important role in the communication of affect by virtual characters. The qualitative findings indicated that participants attribute a variety of psychological states to the behavioral cues displayed by virtual characters. In addition, participants tended to interpret the social context portrayed by the virtual characters in a holistic manner. This suggests that one aspect of the virtual scene colors the perception of the whole social context portrayed by the virtual characters. We conclude by discussing the importance of designing holistically congruent virtual characters especially in immersive settings.

Interviews within experimental frameworks: How to make sense of sense-making in virtual worlds

“…Interpretive interactivity could be gauged by emotive expressions and/or physiological measurements; however, there is often a need to match such objective measurement with a subjective measurement to insure that the researcher's interpretation of the observable behaviors coincide with the participant's (Mandryk, Inkpen, & Calvert, 2006;Vinayagamoorthy et al, 2008). Feldon and Karfai (2007) The need for a combined data collection methods approach was furthered when considering that this study was not interested in usability issues regarding virtual worlds, but in how sense-making related to those issues.…”

“…Second, using multiple methods of data collection and analysis can be a way to cross-reference the results obtained from the one or the other (Howe, 2004), thereby helping to explain the results obtained from either (see examples: Garau, M., Friedman, D., Widenfeld, H.R., Antley, A., Brogni, A. & Slater, M., 2008; Mandryk, Inkpen, & Calvert, 2006;Vinayagamoorthy, Steed, & Slater, 2008).…”

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“…Before the experiment, the participant was required to complete a pre-questionnaire: SAD (Watson and Friend, 1969), which Frontiers in Robotics and AI | Virtual Environments included 27 statements associated with social anxiety, which he could choose either to "agree" or "disagree." As an example, the following are three questions from the questionnaire:…”

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