13 research outputs found

    Team Creation Methods in Practice: Understanding the Potential Effects of Nonverbal Communication in The Leadership of Team Formation

    Get PDF
    Teams require leadership, even if they are self-managed. The group of individuals who make up a team must be gathered in some form or another. For self managed teams to function successfully, the first step is the process of creating the team. Many aspects may factor into the creation process. Often time is of the essence and methods to quickly assess and form teams show merit. First impressions in general are based largely on nonverbal communication. The focus of this mixed-methods concurrent embedded study is to analyze the potential effects of nonverbal communication on influencing team creation. A group of mechanical engineering students placed randomly into teams provided a source of feedback on how they could have been affected if factors of nonverbal communication had been considered. Research has been conducted on small business hiring, self-managed teams, nonverbal communication, and team leadership; however, the author has not identified historical works concerning the potential impacts of nonverbal communication used by leaders in the formation of teams

    Managing an agent's self-presentational strategies during an interaction

    Get PDF
    In this paper we present a computational model for managing the impressions of warmth and competence (the two fundamental dimensions of social cognition) of an Embodied Conversational Agent (ECA) while interacting with a human. The ECA can choose among four different self-presentational strategies eliciting different impressions of warmth and/or competence in the user, through its verbal and non-verbal behavior. The choice of the non-verbal behaviors displayed by the ECA relies on our previous studies. In our first study, we annotated videos of human-human natural interactions of an expert on a given topic talking to a novice, in order to find associations between the warmth and competence elicited by the expert's non-verbal behaviors (such as type of gestures, arms rest poses, smiling). In a second study, we investigated whether the most relevant non-verbal cues found in the previous study were perceived in the same way when displayed by an ECA. The computational learning model presented in this paper aims to learn in real-time the best strategy (i.e., the degree of warmth and/or competence to display) for the ECA, that is, the one which maximizes user's engagement during the interaction. We also present an evaluation study, aiming to investigate our model in a real context. In the experimental scenario, the ECA plays the role of a museum guide introducing an exposition about video games. We collected data from 75 visitors of a science museum. The ECA was displayed in human dimension on a big screen in front of the participant, with a Kinect on the top. During the interaction, the ECA could adopt one of 4 self-presentational strategies during the whole interaction, or it could select one strategy randomly for each speaking turn, or it could use a reinforcement learning algorithm to choose the strategy having the highest reward (i.e., user's engagement) after each speaking turn

    Nonverbal and Paralinguistic Behaviours During the Adult Attachment Interview: The Construction of a Novel Coding System

    Get PDF
    The current study outlines the development, construction, and reliability of a novel coding tool for the Adult Attachment Interview and was designed to address perceived deficits in both research and clinical practice. Just as nonverbal behavior finds its roots in ethology, so too does attachment theory. While the Ainsworth Strange Situation Protocol adhered to the ethological roots of attachment theory by observing nonverbal behavior, the Adult Attachment Interview is traditionally scored based on verbal content alone. At present, there does not exist a reliable taxonomy of nonverbal behaviors associated with adult attachment style. As the first stage of a larger stepwise research program, the current study describes the process of manual development by selecting relevant factors through a recursive process of literature review and direct video observation, coding process, training, and feedback, and presents preliminary reliability estimates and agreement statistics for both individual behaviors and larger aggregate behavioral categories. These preliminary results showed great promise for the newly developed coding tool, allowing the investigators to identify 1) reliable behavioral categories and individual behaviors, 2) behavioral categories and individual behaviors that demonstrated sensitivity to training and feedback, and 3) individual behaviors and categories that require further remediation and investigation in future studies

    Exploring Kinaesthetic and Body Self-Awareness in Professional Musicians

    Get PDF
    This research aimed to explore whether developing movement awareness in the playing of professional musicians could improve performance and assist in reducing tension. The issue was studied adopting a neurophenomenological perspective (Varela, 1996) which combines the traditions of continental phenomenology and neuroscientific studies related to cognitive processes. Musicians are often not aware of the importance of their body movements or gestures in playing (Holgersen, 2010). This research investigated whether movement awareness could be developed and if so what impact it would have on performance. Qualitative data were collected by applying phenomenological First-person mediator methods through semi-structured interviews, observation, and audiovisual materials. A range of professional instrumentalists participated. A quasi-repeated qualitative measurement research design was adopted. The musicians were asked to perform an easy, slow piece of music, which they had previously chosen, from memory three times. The first time the piece was performed with no intervention. In the first intervention they were asked to mentally rehearse the piece before playing it again, and in the second, they were asked to simulate the movements of playing without their instrument, before performing. The activities and performances were video recorded. The data were analysed in terms of verbal and non-verbal responses during the interviews and following performance. The performances were analysed by a panel of five experienced musicians and comparisons made in relation to the way the participants responded to the interventions. The findings showed that all of the musicians were affected by the simulation which aroused a range of feelings. The simulation seemed to generate kinaesthetic and sensory-motor feedback assisting the musicians in shaping their thoughts and developing body self-awareness even when they expressed negative feelings. The panellists noted a reduction in anxiety particularly following the third performance and an increase in concentration, musical communication, accuracy and fluidity of gestures

    STS analysis of natural gas development in the United States

    Get PDF
    Thesis (Ph. D. in History, Anthropology, and Science, Technology and Society (HASTS))--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Program in Science, Technology and Society, 2011.Page 689 blank. Cataloged from PDF version of thesis.Includes bibliographical references (p. 652-688).Natural gas extraction in the United States in the early 21st century has transformed social, physical, legal and biological landscapes. The technique of hydraulic fracturing, which entails the high-pressure injection into subsurface shale formations of synthetic chemical mixtures, has been viewed by the natural gas industry as a practice of great promise. But there is another side to the story. The first half of this dissertation explores an innovative scientific approach to studying the possible deleterious impacts on human health and the environment of the release of chemicals used in gas extraction. Via participant-observation within a small scientific advocacy organization, The Endocrine Disruption Exchange (TEDX), I follow the development of a database of chemicals used in natural gas extraction, a database that seeks to document not only what these chemicals are (many are proprietary), but also what sorts of bodily and ecological effects these substances may have. I analyze ethnographically how TEDX transformed an information vacuum around fracturing and generated fierce regional and national debates about the public health effects of this activity. The second portion of the dissertation expands TEDX's databasing methodology by reporting on a set of online user-generated databasing and mapping tools developed to interconnect communities encountering the corporate forces and chemical processes animating gas development. Shale gas extraction is an intensive technological practice and requires the delicate calibration of corporate, governmental, and legal apparatuses in order to proceed. The industry operates at county, state, and federal levels, and has in many instances been able to organize regulatory environments suited to rapid and lucrative gas extraction. In the midst of such multi-scalar deterritorializing forces, communities may have little legal or technical recourse if they think that they have been subject to chemical and corporate forces that undermine their financial, bodily, and social security. ExtrAct, a research group I co-founded and directed with artist and technologist Chris Csikszentmihalyi, sought to intervene in these processes by developing a suite of online mapping and databasing tools through which "gas patch" communities could share information, network, study and respond to industry activity across states. Using ExtrAct as an example this dissertation explores how social sciences and the academy at large can invest in developing research tools, methods, and programs designed for non-corporate ends, perhaps redressing in the process the informational and technical imbalances faced by communities dealing with large-scale multinational industries whose infrastructure and impacts are largely invisible to public scrutiny. The dissertation describes one potential method for such engaged scientific and social scientific research: an iterative, ethnographically informed process that I term "STS in Practice."by Sara Ann Wylie.Ph.D.in History, Anthropology, and Science, Technology and Society (HAST

    Visualising 'The Waste Land': Discovering a Praxis of Adaptation

    Get PDF
    This research examines the issues and visual processes that arise in the production of self-representations derived from literary texts. The construction of a series of photographic and video installations drawing upon T. S Eliot’s poem 'The Waste Land' (1922) allowed for the exploration and analysis of how literature functions as a device to represent autobiographical experience within my media arts practice. The study considered the relevance and usage of the literary source in relation to specific adaptation procedures, in terms of what complexities were encountered and how these were understood. Whilst orthodox film adaptation provided a theoretical framework for initial experimentation, it is argued that my practice is positioned outside this domain, employing alternative methods of visual translation within a fine art context. Having investigated the purpose of my literary interpretations, I conclude that I respond subjectively to the source materials, forming autobiographical associations with particular lines, images, characters, themes or concepts within the text. It was discovered that this fragmentary method of extraction into isolated elements, corresponded with ambiguous visual representation of the self. Placed within the critical context of relevant female practitioners, I was able to detect a number of recurrent, elusive strategies within my own practice that signified a shifting subjectivity. However, it was the identification with Eliot’s subversion of his impersonality theory in later life, which enabled the realisation that literature is used in my work as a means of projection for visualising past trauma and operates as a form of displacement for a confessional practice. The thesis that emerges from my research is that by allowing oneself to respond emotionally and selectively to an existing text through transformative processes of re-enactment, literary adaptation can act as catharsis for the recollection and re-imagining of previously repressed memories

    Participant responses to virtual agents in immersive virtual environments.

    Get PDF
    This thesis is concerned with interaction between people and virtual humans in the context of highly immersive virtual environments (VEs). Empirical studies have shown that virtual humans (agents) with even minimal behavioural capabilities can have a significant emotional impact on participants of immersive virtual environments (IVEs) to the extent that these have been used in studies of mental health issues such as social phobia and paranoia. This thesis focuses on understanding the impact on the responses of people to the behaviour of virtual humans rather than their visual appearance. There are three main research questions addressed. First, the thesis considers what are the key nonverbal behavioural cues used to portray a specific psychological state. Second, research determines the extent to which the underlying state of a virtual human is recognisable through the display of a key set of cues inferred from the behaviour of real humans. Finally, the degree to which a perceived psychological state in a virtual human invokes responses from participants in immersive virtual environments that are similar to those observed in the physical world is considered. These research questions were investigated through four experiments. The first experiment focused on the impact of visual fidelity and behavioural complexity on participant responses by implementing a model of gaze behaviour in virtual humans. The results of the study concluded that participants expected more life-like behaviours from more visually realistic virtual humans. The second experiment investigated the detrimental effects on participant responses when interacting with virtual humans with low behavioural complexity. The third experiment investigated the differences in responses of participants to virtual humans perceived to be in varying emotional states. The emotional states of the virtual humans were portrayed using postural and facial cues. Results indicated that posture does play an important role in the portrayal of affect however the behavioural model used in the study did not fully cover the qualities of body movement associated with the emotions studied. The final experiment focused on the portrayal of affect through the quality of body movement such as the speed of gestures. The effectiveness of the virtual humans was gauged through exploring a variety of participant responses including subjective responses, objective physiological and behavioural measures. The results show that participants are affected and respond to virtual humans in a significant manner provided that an appropriate behavioural model is used

    Simulation of nonverbal social interaction and small groups dynamics in virtual environments

    Get PDF
    How can the behaviour of humans who interact with other humans be simulated in virtual environments? This thesis investigates the issue by proposing a number of dedicated models, computer languages, software architectures, and specifications of computational components. It relies on a large knowledge base from the social sciences, which offers concepts, descriptions, and classifications that guided the research process. The simulation of nonverbal social interaction and group dynamics in virtual environments can be divided in two main research problems: (1) an action selection problem, where autonomous agents must be made capable of deciding when, with whom, and how they interact according to individual characteristics of themselves and others; and (2) a behavioural animation problem, where, on the basis of the selected interaction, 3D characters must realistically behave in their virtual environment and communicate nonverbally with others by automatically triggering appropriate actions such as facial expressions, gestures, and postural shifts. In order to introduce the problem of action selection in social environments, a high-level architecture for social agents, based on the sociological concepts of role, norm, and value, is first discussed. A model of action selection for members of small groups, based on proactive and reactive motivational components, is then presented. This model relies on a new tagbased language called Social Identity Markup Language (SIML), allowing the rich specification of agents' social identities and relationships. A complementary model controls the simulation of interpersonal relationship development within small groups. The interactions of these two models create a complex system exhibiting emergent properties for the generation of meaningful sequences of social interactions in the temporal dimension. To address the issues related to the visualization of nonverbal interactions, results are presented of an evaluation experiment aimed at identifying the application requirements through an analysis of how real people interact nonverbally in virtual environments. Based on these results, a number of components for MPEG-4 body animation, AML — a tag-based language for the seamless integration and synchronization of facial animation, body animation, and speech — and a high-level interaction visualization service for the VHD++ platform are described. This service simulates the proxemic and kinesic aspects of nonverbal social interactions, and comprises such functionalities as parametric postures, adapters and observation behaviours, the social avoidance of collisions, intelligent approach behaviours, and the calculation of suitable interaction distances and angles

    Relational agents : effecting change through human-computer relationships

    Get PDF
    Thesis (Ph. D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, School of Architecture and Planning, Program in Media Arts and Sciences, 2003.Includes bibliographical references (p. 205-219).What kinds of social relationships can people have with computers? Are there activities that computers can engage in that actively draw people into relationships with them? What are the potential benefits to the people who participate in these human-computer relationships? To address these questions this work introduces a theory of Relational Agents, which are computational artifacts designed to build and maintain long-term, social-emotional relationships with their users. These can be purely software humanoid animated agents--as developed in this work--but they can also be non-humanoid or embodied in various physical forms, from robots, to pets, to jewelry, clothing, hand-helds, and other interactive devices. Central to the notion of relationship is that it is a persistent construct, spanning multiple interactions; thus, Relational Agents are explicitly designed to remember past history and manage future expectations in their interactions with users. Finally, relationships are fundamentally social and emotional, and detailed knowledge of human social psychology--with a particular emphasis on the role of affect--must be incorporated into these agents if they are to effectively leverage the mechanisms of human social cognition in order to build relationships in the most natural manner possible. People build relationships primarily through the use of language, and primarily within the context of face-to-face conversation. Embodied Conversational Agents--anthropomorphic computer characters that emulate the experience of face-to-face conversation--thus provide the substrate for this work, and so the relational activities provided by the theory will primarily be specific types of verbal and nonverbal conversational behaviors used by people to negotiate and maintain relationships.(cont.) This work also provides an analysis of the types of applications in which having a human-computer relationship is advantageous to the human participant. In addition to applications in which the relationship is an end in itself (e.g., in entertainment systems), human-computer relationships are important in tasks in which the human is attempting to undergo some change in behavior or cognitive or emotional state. One such application is explored here: a system for assisting the user through a month-long health behavior change program in the area of exercise adoption. This application involves the research, design and implementation of relational agents as well as empirical evaluation of their ability to build relationships and effect change over a series of interactions with users.by Timothy Wallace Bickmore.Ph.D

    Avatar augmented online conversation

    Get PDF
    Thesis (Ph. D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, School of Architecture and Planning, Program in Media Arts and Sciences, 2003.Includes bibliographical references (p. 167-175).One of the most important roles played by technology is connecting people and mediating their communication with one another. Building technology that mediates conversation presents a number of challenging research and design questions. Apart from the fundamental issue of what exactly gets mediated, two of the more crucial questions are how the person being mediated interacts with the mediating layer and how the receiving person experiences the mediation. This thesis is concerned with both of these questions and proposes a theoretical framework of mediated conversation by means of automated avatars. This new approach relies on a model of face-to-face conversation, and derives an architecture for implementing these features through automation. First the thesis describes the process of face-to-face conversation and what nonverbal behaviors contribute to its success. It then presents a theoretical framework that explains how a text message can be automatically analyzed in terms of its communicative function based on discourse context, and how behaviors, shown to support those same functions in face-to-face conversation, can then be automatically performed by a graphical avatar in synchrony with the message delivery. An architecture, Spark, built on this framework demonstrates the approach in an actual system design that introduces the concept of a message transformation pipeline, abstracting function from behavior, and the concept of an avatar agent, responsible for coordinated delivery and continuous maintenance of the communication channel. A derived application, MapChat, is an online collaboration system where users represented by avatars in a shared virtual environment can chat and manipulate an interactive map while their avatars generate face-to-face behaviors.(cont.) A study evaluating the strength of the approach compares groups collaborating on a route-planning task using MapChat with and without the animated avatars. The results show that while task outcome was equally good for both groups, the group using these avatars felt that the task was significantly less difficult, and the feeling of efficiency and consensus were significantly stronger. An analysis of the conversation transcripts shows a significant improvement of the overall conversational process and significantly fewer messages spent on channel maintenance in the avatar groups. The avatars also significantly improved the users' perception of each others' effort. Finally, MapChat with avatars was found to be significantly more personal, enjoyable, and easier to use. The ramifications of these findings with respect to mediating conversation are discussed.by Hannes Högni. Vilhjálmsson.Ph.D
    corecore