281 research outputs found

    Recognizing Facial Mimicry In Virtual Group Conversations

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    With the current COVID-19 pandemic, group communication is often restricted to virtual video-conferencing platforms like Zoom in order to inhibit the spread of the virus. The virtual communication environment affects our ability to assess group emotion and support verbal messages through nonverbal communication. Because virtual meetings create visibility restrictions due to limited camera view, body language is occluded, and faces are now at the forefront of social interactions within groups. Since faces are still visible, it allows for some key components of interpersonal interactions to still occur, such as facial mimicry. Facial mimicry occurs when one person mirrors another person\u27s facial expressions. Most research on facial mimicry has been conducted on face-to-face interactions. Further studies have also shown that facial mimicry exists when an individual is reacting to a recorded video containing different expressions. However, there is limited research on facial mimicry within video-conferencing conversations. Our research aims to use facial expression recognition techniques to analyze if facial mimicry exists during group conversations over virtual platforms through facial action units and expressions. For this purpose, we used current state-of-the-art methods to recognize and analyze the activation of eye gaze, seven universal facial expressions, and seventeen commonly presented facial action units over time for each participant within various Zoom meetings that were uploaded on Youtube to measure facial mimicry. From observing the simultaneous activation of facial action units, our findings suggest that facial mimicry, specifically in reaction to smiling and positive facial expressions, does exist in video-conferencing group conversations. We plan to conduct future research to determine whether this positive facial mimicry improves group emotion and productivity.https://orb.binghamton.edu/research_days_posters_2021/1105/thumbnail.jp

    ACII 2009: Affective Computing and Intelligent Interaction. Proceedings of the Doctoral Consortium 2009

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    A conceptual framework for an affective tutoring system using unobtrusive affect sensing for enhanced tutoring outcomes

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    PhD ThesisAffect plays a pivotal role in influencing the student’s motivation and learning achievements. The ability of expert human tutors to achieve enhanced learning outcomes is widely attributed to their ability to sense the affect of their tutees and to continually adapt their tutoring strategies in response to the dynamically changing affect throughout the tutoring session. In this thesis, I explore the feasibility of building an Affective Tutoring System (ATS) which senses the student’s affect on a moment-to-moment basis with the use of unobtrusive sensors in the context of computer programming tutoring. The novel use of keystrokes and mouse clicks for affect sensing is proposed here as they are ubiquitous and unobtrusive. I first establish the viability of using keystrokes and contextual logs for affect sensing first on a per exercise session level and then on a more granular basis of 30 seconds. Subsequently, I move on to investigate the use of multiple sensing channels e.g. facial, keystrokes, mouse clicks, contextual logs and head postures to enhance the availability and accuracy of sensing. The results indicated that it is viable to use keystrokes for affect sensing. In addition, the combination of multiple sensor modes enhances the accuracy of affect sensing. From the results, the sensor modes that are most significant for affect sensing are the head postures and facial modes. Nevertheless, keystrokes make up for the periods of unavailability of the former. With the affect sensing (both sensing of frustration and disengagement) in place, I moved on to architect and design the ATS and conducted an experimental study and a series of focus group discussions to evaluate the ATS. The results showed that the ATS is rated positively by the participants for usability and acceptance. The ATS is also effective in enhancing the learning of the studentsNanyang Polytechni
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