Modeling culturally authentic style shifting with virtual peers

: We report on a new kind of culturally-authentic embodied conversational agent more in line with the ways that culture and ethnicity function in the real world. On the basis of the careful analysis of a corpus of verbal and nonverbal behavior, we found that children shift dialects and ways of using their body depending on social context and task. Based on these results, we implemented a culturally authentic African American virtual peer capable of “code-switching” between African American English and Mainstream American English, and of using nonverbal behavior differently, depending on context. An evaluation of the agent revealed that the virtual peer elicited the same style changes in real children as real children did in one another. Categories and Subject Descriptors: H.5.1 [Information Systems]: Multimedia Information Systems – Artificial, augmented, and virtual realities. General Terms: Language, Human Factors, Design

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2009
• Where: ICMI
• Authors: Justine Cassell, Kathleen Geraghty, Berto Gonzalez, John Borland
• Keywords: Biometrics, Embodied Conversational Agent, ICMI 2009, Nonverbal Behavior, Virtual Peer