Effects of language familiarity in simulated natural dialogue with a virtual crowd of digital humans on emotion contagion in virtual reality

Matias Volonte*, Chang Chun Wang, Elham Ebrahimi, Yu Chun Hsu, Kuan Yu Liu, Sai-Keung Wong, Sabarish V. Babu

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingConference contributionpeer-review

4 Scopus citations

Abstract

This investigation compared the emotional impact caused by a crowd of affective virtual humans (VHs) that communicated in the users' native or foreign language. We evaluated the users' affective reactions to a crowd of VHs that exhibited distinct emotional expressions. A total of four emotions were presented, which were Positive, Negative, Neutral, and Mixed. The VHs performed verbal and non-behaviors accordingly. Under the Mixed condition, the VHs were divided into three groups equally and each group was uniquely assigned one of the three emotions (i.e., positive, negative, and neutral). Users collected ten items from a virtual reality market. To complete the tasks, they interacted using natural speech with the emotional VHs. Three language conditions were investigated: one condition in USA and another two conditions in Taiwan. The group of participants in USA interacted with the VHs in English; and the two groups of participants in Taiwan interacted with the VHs using a foreign (English) language and a native (Mandarin) language respectively. We discovered that the medium of communication or language familiarity had a strong influence on participants' emotional reactions. When participants interacted in a foreign language with VHs with a positive emotional disposition, we found their positive emotional reactions were subdued and negative reactions were elevated. However, this was not the case when participants interacted with VHs in their native language, as their emotional reactions were contingent on the emotional disposition of the VHs.

Original languageEnglish
Title of host publicationProceedings - 2021 IEEE Conference on Virtual Reality and 3D User Interfaces, VR 2021
PublisherInstitute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Inc.
Pages188-197
Number of pages10
ISBN (Electronic)9780738125565
DOIs
StatePublished - 27 Mar 2021
Event28th IEEE Conference on Virtual Reality and 3D User Interfaces, VR 2021 - Virtual, Lisboa, Portugal
Duration: 27 Mar 20213 Apr 2021

Publication series

NameProceedings - 2021 IEEE Conference on Virtual Reality and 3D User Interfaces, VR 2021

Conference

Conference28th IEEE Conference on Virtual Reality and 3D User Interfaces, VR 2021
Country/TerritoryPortugal
CityVirtual, Lisboa
Period27/03/213/04/21

Keywords

  • Emotional Contagion
  • Virtual Crowds
  • Virtual Humans
  • Virtual Reality

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