Accession Number:

ADA459210

Title:

Virtual Rapport

Descriptive Note:

Conference paper

Corporate Author:

UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA MARINA DEL REY CA INST FOR CREATIVE TECHNOLOGIES

Personal Author(s):

• Gratch, Jonathan
• Okhmatovskaia, Anna
• Lamothe, Francois
• Marsella, Stacy
• Morales, Mathieu
• Werf, R. J. van der
• Morency, Louis-Philippe

Report Date:

2006-01-01

Pagination or Media Count:

15.0

Abstract:

Effective face-to-face conversations are highly interactive. Participants respond to each other, engaging in nonconscious behavioral mimicry and backchanneling feedback. Such behaviors produce a subjective sense of rapport and are correlated with effective communication, greater liking and trust, and greater influence between participants. Creating rapport requires a tight sense-act loop that has been traditionally lacking in embodied conversational agents. Here we describe a system, based on psycholinguistic theory, designed to create a sense of rapport between a human speaker and virtual human listener. We provide empirical evidence that it increases speaker fluency and engagement.

Descriptors:

• *MAN COMPUTER INTERFACE
• *PSYCHOLINGUISTICS
• SYMPOSIA
• VERBAL BEHAVIOR
• INTERACTIONS

Subject Categories:

• Linguistics
• Psychology
• Cybernetics

Distribution Statement:

APPROVED FOR PUBLIC RELEASE