Abstract
An affective, virtual agent is presented that acts as a teacher in the classical paired associate task. It is explained, why and how the virtual agent framework MARC was combined with the cognitive architecture ACT-R, the affect simulation architecture WASABI, and the voice-synthesis module OpenMARY. The agent’s affective feedback capabilities are evaluated through an empirical study, in which participants had to solve association tasks. We expected that (1) the presentation of the task by a (neutral) virtual agent would change a learner’s performance and that (2) the additional simulation and expression of emotions would impact a learner’s performance as well. Finally, we discuss reasons for the lack of statistically significant differences as well as planned future application scenarios of our affective agent framework.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Johnson, W.L., Rickel, J.W., Lester, J.C.: Animated pedagogical agents: Face-to-face interaction in interactive learning environments. International Journal of Artificial Intelligence in Education 11, 47–78 (2000)
Conati, C.: Probabilistic assessment of user’s emotions in educational games. Applied Artificial Intelligence 16, 555–575 (2002)
Qu, L., Wang, N., Johnson, W.L.: Pedagogical agents that interact with learners. In: AAMAS 2004 Workshop on Balanced Perception and Action in ECAs (2004)
Prendinger, H., Becker, C., Ishizuka, M.: A study in users’ physiological response to an empathic interface agent. Intl. Journal of Humanoid Robotics 3(3), 371–391 (2006)
Hall, L., Woods, S., Aylett, R.: Fearnot! involving children in the design of a virtual learning environment. Intl. Journal of Artificial Intelligence in Education 16(4), 327–351 (2006)
Anderson, J.R.: Interference: The relationship between response latency and response accuracy. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Learning and Memory 7(5), 326–343 (1981)
Gratch, J., Rickel, J., André, E., Badler, N., Cassell, J., Petajan, E.: Creating interactive virtual humans: Some assembly required. IEEE Intelligent Systems 17, 54–63 (2002)
Kenny, P., Hartholt, A., Gratch, J., Swartout, W., Traum, D., Marsella, S.C., Piepol, D.: Building Interactive Virtual Humans for Training Environments. In: Interservice/Industry Training, Simulation and Education Conference (2007)
Niewiadomski, R., Bevacqua, E., Mancini, M., Pelachaud, C.: Greta: an interactive expressive eca system. In: Proc. Intl. Conf. on Autonomous Agents and Multiagent Systems, AAMAS 2009, Richland, SC, pp. 1399–1400 (2009)
Courgeon, M., Martin, J.C., Jacquemin, C.: MARC: a Multimodal Affective and Reactive Character. In: Proc. 1st Workshop on Affective Interaction in Natural Environements (2008)
Tsai, J., Bowring, E., Marsella, S., Wood, W., Tambe, M.: A study of emotional contagion with virtual characters. In: Nakano, Y., Neff, M., Paiva, A., Walker, M. (eds.) IVA 2012. LNCS, vol. 7502, pp. 81–88. Springer, Heidelberg (2012)
Krämer, N., Kopp, S., Becker-Asano, C., Sommer, N.: Smile and the world will smile with you – the effects of a virtual agent’s smile on users’ evaluation and behavior. Intl. Journal of Human-Computer Studies 71(3), 335–349 (2013)
Anderson, J., Lebiere, C.: The Atomic Components of Thougt. Taylor & Francis (1998)
Robison, J., McQuiggan, S., Lester, J.: Evaluating the consequences of affective feedback in intelligent tutoring systems. In: Affective Computing and Intelligent Interaction and Workshops, pp. 1–6 (2009)
Aghaei Pour, P., Hussain, M.S., AlZoubi, O., D’Mello, S., Calvo, R.A.: The impact of system feedback on learners affective and physiological states. In: Aleven, V., Kay, J., Mostow, J. (eds.) ITS 2010, Part I. LNCS, vol. 6094, pp. 264–273. Springer, Heidelberg (2010)
Schröder, M., Trouvain, J.: The German Text-to-Speech Synthesis System MARY: A Tool for Research, Development and Teaching. International Journal of Speech Technology 6, 365–377 (2003)
Becker-Asano, C.: WASABI: Affect simulation for agents with believable interactivity, vol. 319. IOS Press (2008)
Butcher, C.: Dragonfly speech recognition source code (April 2013), http://code.google.com/p/dragonfly/
Courgeon, M., Clavel, C., Tan, N., Martin, J.C.: Front view vs. side view of facial and postural expressions of emotions in a virtual character. In: Pan, Z., Cheok, A.D., Müller, W. (eds.) Transactions on Edutainment VI. LNCS, vol. 6758, pp. 132–143. Springer, Heidelberg (2011)
Vilhjálmsson, H.H., et al.: The behavior markup language: Recent developments and challenges. In: Pelachaud, C., Martin, J.-C., André, E., Chollet, G., Karpouzis, K., Pelé, D. (eds.) IVA 2007. LNCS (LNAI), vol. 4722, pp. 99–111. Springer, Heidelberg (2007)
Steiner, I., Schröder, M., Charfuelan, M., Klepp, A.: Symbolic vs. acoustics-based style control for expressive unit selection. In: ISCA Tutorial and Research Workshop on Speech Synthesis (SSW-7), Kyoto, Japan, ISCA (2010)
Leite, I., Martinho, C., Pereira, A., Paiva, A.: iCat: an affective game buddy based on anticipatory mechanisms. In: Proc. 7th Intl. Joint Conf. on Autonomous Agents and Multiagent Systems, AAMAS 2008, Richland, SC, vol. 3, pp. 1229–1232 (2008)
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2013 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg
About this paper
Cite this paper
Becker-Asano, C., Stahl, P., Ragni, M., Courgeon, M., Martin, JC., Nebel, B. (2013). An Affective Virtual Agent Providing Embodied Feedback in the Paired Associate Task: System Design and Evaluation. In: Aylett, R., Krenn, B., Pelachaud, C., Shimodaira, H. (eds) Intelligent Virtual Agents. IVA 2013. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 8108. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-40415-3_36
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-40415-3_36
Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg
Print ISBN: 978-3-642-40414-6
Online ISBN: 978-3-642-40415-3
eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)