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Expressions of Empathy in ECAs

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Intelligent Virtual Agents (IVA 2008)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNAI,volume 5208))

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Abstract

Recent research has shown that empathic virtual agents enable to improve human-machine interaction. Virtual agent’s expressions of empathy are generally fixed intuitively and are not evaluated. In this paper, we propose a novel approach for the expressions of empathy using complex facial expressions like superposition and masking. An evaluation study have been conducted in order to identify the most appropriate way to express empathy. According to the evaluation results people find more suitable facial expressions that contain elements of emotion of empathy. In particular, complex facial expressions seem to be a good approach to express empathy.

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Helmut Prendinger James Lester Mitsuru Ishizuka

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© 2008 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg

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Niewiadomski, R., Ochs, M., Pelachaud, C. (2008). Expressions of Empathy in ECAs. In: Prendinger, H., Lester, J., Ishizuka, M. (eds) Intelligent Virtual Agents. IVA 2008. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 5208. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-540-85483-8_4

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-540-85483-8_4

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-540-85482-1

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-540-85483-8

  • eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)

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