Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in

Interacting with Virtual Agents in Shared Space: Single and Joint Effects of Gaze and Proxemics

  • Conference paper
  • First Online:

We’re sorry, something doesn't seem to be working properly.

Please try refreshing the page. If that doesn't work, please contact support so we can address the problem.

Intelligent Virtual Agents (IVA 2016)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNAI,volume 10011))

Included in the following conference series:

Abstract

The Equilibrium Theory put forward by Argyle and Dean, posits that in human-human interactions, gaze and proxemic behaviors work together in establishing and maintaining a particular level of intimacy. This theory has been evaluated and used in Virtual Reality settings where people interact with Virtual Humans. In this study we disentangle the single and joint effects of proxemic and gaze behavior in this setting further, and examine how these behaviors affect the perceived personality of the agents. We simulate a social encounter with Virtual Humans in immersive Virtual Reality. Gaze and proxemic behaviors of the agents are manipulated dynamically while the participants’ gaze and proxemic responses are being measured. As could be expected, participants showed strongest gaze and proxemic responses when agents manipulated both at the same time. However, agents that only manipulated gaze elicited weaker responses compared to agents that only manipulated proxemics. Agents that exhibited more directed gaze and reduced interpersonal distance were attributed higher scores on intimacy related items than agents that exhibited averted gaze and increased interpersonal distance.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this chapter

Log in via an institution
Chapter
USD 29.95
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
eBook
USD 39.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as EPUB and PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
Softcover Book
USD 54.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Compact, lightweight edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Purchases are for personal use only

Institutional subscriptions

References

  1. Jan, D., Traum, D.R.: Dynamic movement and positioning of embodied agents in multiparty conversations. Comput. Linguist. 1968, 1 (2007)

    Google Scholar 

  2. Pedica, C., Vilhjálmsson, H.H.: Spontaneous avatar behavior for human territoriality. In: Ruttkay, Z., Kipp, M., Nijholt, A., Vilhjálmsson, H.H. (eds.) IVA 2009. LNCS (LNAI), vol. 5773, pp. 344–357. Springer, Heidelberg (2009). doi:10.1007/978-3-642-04380-2_38

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  3. Hall, E.T., Birdwhistell, R.L., Bock, B., Bohannan, P., Diebold Jr., A.R., Durbin, M., Edmonson, M.S., Fischer, J.L., Hymes, D., Kimball, S.T.: Proxemics. Curr. Anthropol. 9, 83–108 (1968)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  4. Kendon, A.: The F-formation system: the spatial organization of social encounters. Man Environ. Syst. 6, 291–296 (1976)

    Google Scholar 

  5. Argyle, M., Dean, J.: Eye-contact, distance and affiliation. Sociometry 28(3), 289–304 (1965)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  6. Coutts, L.M., Schneider, F.W.: Affiliative conflict theory: an investigation of the intimacy equilibrium and compensation hypothesis. J. Pers. Soc. Psychol. 34(6), 1135–1142 (1976)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  7. Patterson, M.L.: Interpersonal distance, affect, and equilibrium theory. J. Soc. Psychol. 101(2), 205–214 (1977)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  8. Rosenfeld, H.M., Breck, B.E., Smith, S.H., Kehoe, S.: Intimacy-mediators of the proximity-gaze compensation effect: movement, conversational role, acquaintance, and gender. J. Nonverbal Behav. 8(4), 235–249 (1984)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  9. Bailenson, J.N., Blascovich, J., Beall, A.C., Loomis, J.M.: Equilibrium theory revisited: Mutual gaze and personal space in virtual environments. Presence 10(6), 583–598 (2001)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  10. Emery, N.J.: The eyes have it: the neuroethology, function and evolution of social gaze. Neurosci. Biobehav. Rev. 24(6), 581–604 (2000)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  11. Pfeiffer, U.J., Schilbach, L., Jording, M., Timmermans, B., Bente, G., Vogeley, K.: Eyes on the mind: Investigating the influence of gaze dynamics on the perception of others in real-time social interaction. Front. Psychol. 3, 1–11 (2012)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  12. Ruhland, K., Andrist, S., Badler, J., Peters, C., Badler, N., Gleicher, M., Mcdonnell, R.: Look me in the eyes: a survey of eye and gaze animation for virtual agents and artificial systems. In: Eurographics State-of-the-Art Report, pp. 69–91, April 2014

    Google Scholar 

  13. Ioannou, S., Morris, P., Mercer, H., Baker, M., Gallese, V., Reddy, V.: Proximity and gaze influences facial temperature: a thermal infrared imaging study. Front. Psychol. 5, 1–12 (2014)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  14. Kuzuoka, H., Suzuki, Y., Yamashita, J., Yamazaki, K.: Reconfiguring spatial formation arrangement by robot body orientation. In: 2010 5th ACM/IEEE International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction (HRI), pp. 285–292 (2010)

    Google Scholar 

  15. Hall, E.T.: The Hidden Dimension, vol. 1990. Anchor Books, New York (1969)

    Google Scholar 

  16. Cristani, M., Paggetti, G., Vinciarelli, A., Bazzani, L., Menegaz, G., Murino, V.: Towards computational proxemics: inferring social relations from interpersonal distances. In: Proceedings of the 2011 IEEE International Conference on Privacy, Risk and Trust/IEEE International Conference on Social Computing PASSAT/SocialCom 2011, pp. 290–297 (2011)

    Google Scholar 

  17. Mead, R., Atrash, A., Matarić, M.J.: Automated proxemic feature extraction and behavior recognition: applications in human-robot interaction. Int. J. Soc. Robot. 5(3), 367–378 (2013)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  18. Cafaro, A., Vilhjálmsson, H.H., Bickmore, T., Heylen, D., Jóhannsdóttir, K.R., Valgarðsson, G.S.: First impressions: users’ judgments of virtual agents’ personality and interpersonal attitude in first encounters. In: Nakano, Y., Neff, M., Paiva, A., Walker, M. (eds.) IVA 2012. LNCS (LNAI), vol. 7502, pp. 67–80. Springer, Heidelberg (2012). doi:10.1007/978-3-642-33197-8_7

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  19. Cafaro, A., Vilhjálmsson, H.H., Bickmore, T.W., Heylen, D., Schulman, D.: First impressions in user-agent encounters: the impact of an agent’s nonverbal behavior on users’ relational decisions. In: Proceedings of the 2013 International Conference on Autonomous Agents and Multiagent Systems, pp. 1201–1202 (2013)

    Google Scholar 

  20. Obaid, M., Niewiadomski, R., Pelachaud, C.: Perception of spatial relations and of coexistence with virtual agents. In: Vilhjálmsson, H.H., Kopp, S., Marsella, S., Thórisson, K.R. (eds.) IVA 2011. LNCS (LNAI), vol. 6895, pp. 363–369. Springer, Heidelberg (2011). doi:10.1007/978-3-642-23974-8_39

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  21. Kastanis, I., Slater, M.: Reinforcement learning utilizes proxemics: an avatar learns to manipulate the position of people in immersive virtual reality. Trans. Appl. Percept. 9, 3:1–3:15 (2012)

    Google Scholar 

  22. Ribeiro, F.: UMA - Unity Multipiurpose Avatar System (2015). https://github.com/huika/UMA

  23. Guadagno, R.E., Cialdini, R.B.: Online persuasion: an examination of gender differences in computer-mediated interpersonal influence. Gr. Dyn. Theor. Res. Pract. 6(1), 38–51 (2002)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  24. Guadagno, R.E., Blascovich, J., Bailenson, J.N., McCall, C.: Virtual humans and persuasion: the effects of agency and behavioral realism. Media Psychol. 10(1), 1–22 (2007)

    Google Scholar 

  25. Huisman, G., Kolkmeier, J., Heylen, D.: With us or against us: simulated social touch by virtual agents in a cooperative or competitive setting. In: Bickmore, T., Marsella, S., Sidner, C. (eds.) IVA 2014. LNCS (LNAI), vol. 8637, pp. 204–213. Springer, Heidelberg (2014). doi:10.1007/978-3-319-09767-1_25

    Google Scholar 

  26. Maat, M., Truong, K.P., Heylen, D.: How turn-taking strategies influence users’ impressions of an agent. In: Allbeck, J., Badler, N., Bickmore, T., Pelachaud, C., Safonova, A. (eds.) IVA 2010. LNCS (LNAI), vol. 6356, pp. 441–453. Springer, Heidelberg (2010). doi:10.1007/978-3-642-15892-6_48

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

Download references

Acknowledgments

This work was supported by the European project H2020 ARIA-VALUSPA.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Universiteit Twente, P.O. Box 217, 7500 AE, Enschede, Netherlands

    Jan Kolkmeier, Jered Vroon & Dirk Heylen

Authors
  1. Jan Kolkmeier
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  2. Jered Vroon
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  3. Dirk Heylen
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Jan Kolkmeier .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. University of Southern California, Los Angeles, California, USA

    David Traum

  2. University of Southern California, Los Angeles, California, USA

    William Swartout

  3. US Army Research Laboratory, Los Angeles, California, USA

    Peter Khooshabeh

  4. Universität Bielefeld, Bielefeld, Nordrhein-Westfalen, Germany

    Stefan Kopp

  5. University of Southern California, Los Angeles, California, USA

    Stefan Scherer

  6. University of Southern California, Los Angeles, California, USA

    Anton Leuski

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

Copyright information

© 2016 Springer International Publishing AG

About this paper

Cite this paper

Kolkmeier, J., Vroon, J., Heylen, D. (2016). Interacting with Virtual Agents in Shared Space: Single and Joint Effects of Gaze and Proxemics. In: Traum, D., Swartout, W., Khooshabeh, P., Kopp, S., Scherer, S., Leuski, A. (eds) Intelligent Virtual Agents. IVA 2016. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 10011. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-47665-0_1

Download citation

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-47665-0_1

  • Published:

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-319-47664-3

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-319-47665-0

  • eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)

Publish with us

Policies and ethics

Search

Navigation