Controlling the Gaze of Conversational Agents

Dirk K.J. Heylen, I. van Es, Elisabeth M.A.G. van Dijk, Antinus Nijholt

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    Abstract

    We report on a pilot experiment that investigated the effects of different eye gaze behaviours of a cartoon-like talking face on the quality of human-agent dialogues. We compared a version of the talking face that roughly implements some patterns of human-like behaviour with two other versions. In one of the other versions the shifts in gaze were kept minimal and in the other version the shifts would occur randomly. The talking face has a number of restrictions. There is no speech recognition, so questions and replies have to be typed in by the users of the systems. Despite this restriction we found that participants that conversed with the agent that behaved according to the human-like patterns appreciated the agent better than participants that conversed with the other agents. Conversations with the optimal version also proceeded more efficiently. Participants needed less time to complete their task.
    Original languageEnglish
    Title of host publicationNatural, Intelligent and Effective Interaction in Multimodal Dialogue Systems
    EditorsJ. van Kuppevelt, L. Dybkjaer, N.O. Bernsen
    Place of PublicationDordrecht
    PublisherKluwer Academic Publishers
    Pages245-262
    Number of pages18
    ISBN (Print)1-4020-3932-8
    DOIs
    Publication statusPublished - 2005

    Publication series

    NameText, Speech and Language Technology
    PublisherKluwer Academic Publishers
    Number30

    Keywords

    • HMI-IA: Intelligent Agents
    • Human computer interaction
    • Embodied conversational agents
    • Gaze

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