Is it the real deal? Perception of virtual characters versus humans: an affective cognitive neuroscience perspective

Recent developments in neuroimaging research support the increased use of naturalistic stimulus material such as film, animations, or androids. These stimuli allow for a better understanding of how the brain processes information in complex situations while maintaining experimental control. While avatars and androids are well suited to study human cognition, they should not be equated to human stimuli. For example, the Uncanny Valley hypothesis theorizes that artificial agents with high human-likeness may evoke feelings of eeriness in the human observer. Here we review if, when, and how the perception of human-like avatars and androids differs from the perception of humans and consider how this influences their utilization as stimulus material in social and affective neuroimaging studies. First, we discuss how the appearance of virtual characters affects perception. When stimuli are morphed across categories from non-human to human, the most ambiguous stimuli, rather than the most human-like stimuli, show prolonged classification times and increased eeriness. Human-like to human stimuli show a positive linear relationship with familiarity. Secondly, we show that expressions of emotions in human-like avatars can be perceived similarly to human emotions, with corresponding behavioral, physiological and neuronal activations, with exception of physical dissimilarities. Subsequently, we consider if and when one perceives differences in action representation by artificial agents versus humans. Motor resonance and predictive coding models may account for empirical findings, such as an interference effect on action for observed human-like, natural moving characters. However, the expansion of these models to explain more complex behavior, such as empathy, still needs to be investigated in more detail. Finally, we broaden our outlook to social interaction, where virtual reality stimuli can be utilized to imitate complex social situations

Actors, Avatars and Agents: Potentials and Implications of Natural Face Technology for the Creation of Realistic Visual Presence

We are on the cusp of creating realistic, interactive, fully rendered human faces on computers that transcend the “uncanny valley,” widely known for capturing the phenomenon of “eeriness” in faces that are almost, but not fully realistic. Because humans are hardwired to respond to faces in uniquely positive ways, artificial realistic faces hold great promise for advancing human interaction with machines. For example, realistic avatars will enable presentation of human actors in virtual collaboration settings with new levels of realism; artificial natural faces will allow the embodiment of cognitive agents, such as Amazon’s Alexa or Apple’s Siri, putting us on a path to create “artificial human” entities in the near future. In this conceptual paper, we introduce natural face technology (NFT) and its potential for creating realistic visual presence (RVP), a sensation of presence in interaction with a digital actor, as if present with another human. We contribute a forward-looking research agenda to information systems (IS) research, comprising terminology, early conceptual work, concrete ideas for research projects, and a broad range of research questions for engaging with this emerging, transformative technology as it becomes available for application. By doing so, we respond to calls for “blue ocean research” that explores unchartered territory and makes a novel technology accessible to IS early in its application. We outline promising areas of application and foreshadow philosophical, ethical, and conceptual questions for IS research pertaining to the more speculative phenomena of “living with artificial humans.

To Affinity and Beyond: Interactive Digital Humans as a Human Computer Interface

The field of human computer interaction is increasingly exploring the use of more natural, human-like user interfaces to build intelligent agents to aid in everyday life. This is coupled with a move to people using ever more realistic avatars to represent themselves in their digital lives. As the ability to produce emotionally engaging digital human representations is only just now becoming technically possible, there is little research into how to approach such tasks. This is due to both technical complexity and operational implementation cost. This is now changing as we are at a nexus point with new approaches, faster graphics processing and enabling new technologies in machine learning and computer vision becoming available. I articulate the issues required for such digital humans to be considered successfully located on the other side of the phenomenon known as the Uncanny Valley. My results show that a complex mix of perceived and contextual aspects affect the sense making on digital humans and highlights previously undocumented effects of interactivity on the affinity. Users are willing to accept digital humans as a new form of user interface and they react to them emotionally in previously unanticipated ways. My research shows that it is possible to build an effective interactive digital human that crosses the Uncanny Valley. I directly explore what is required to build a visually realistic digital human as a primary research question and I explore if such a realistic face provides sufficient benefit to justify the challenges involved in building it. I conducted a Delphi study to inform the research approaches and then produced a complex digital human character based on these insights. This interactive and realistic digital human avatar represents a major technical undertaking involving multiple teams around the world. Finally, I explored a framework for examining the ethical implications and signpost future research areas

Comparing virtual vs real faces expressing emotions in children with autism: An eye-tracking study

AbstractDifficulties in processing emotional facial expressions is considered a central characteristic of children with autism spectrum condition (ASC). In addition, there is a growing interest in the use of virtual avatars capable of expressing emotions as an intervention aimed at improving the social skills of these individuals. One potential use of avatars is that they could enhance facial recognition and guide attention. However, this aspect needs further investigation. The aim of our study is to assess differences in eye gaze processes in children with ASC when they see avatar faces expressing emotions compared to real faces. Eye-tracking methodology was used to compare the performance of children with ASC between avatar and real faces. A repeated-measures general linear model was adopted to understand which characteristics of the stimuli could influence the stimuli's fixation times. Survival analysis was performed to understand differences in exploration behaviour between avatar and real faces. Differences between emotion recognition accuracy and the number of fixations were evaluated through a paired t-test. Our results confirm that children with autism have higher capacities to process and recognize emotions when these are presented by avatar faces. Children with autism are more attracted to the mouth or the eyes depending on the stimulus type (avatar or real) and the emotion expressed by the stimulus. Also, they are more attracted to avatar faces expressing negative emotions (anger and sadness), and to real faces expressing surprise. Differences were not found regarding happiness. Finally, they show a higher degree of exploration of avatar faces. All these elements, such as interest in the avatar and reduced attention to the eyes, can offer important elements in planning an efficient intervention

The impact of animations in the perception of a simulated crowd

Simulating virtual crowds is an important challenge in many areas such as games and virtual reality applications. A lot of effort has been dedicated to improving pathfinding, collision avoidance, or decision making, to achieve more realistic human-like behavior. However, crowd simulation will be far from appearing realistic as long as virtual humans are limited to walking animations. Including animation variety could greatly enhance the plausibility of the populated environment. In this paper, we evaluated to what extend animation variety can affect the perceived level of realism of a crowd, regardless of the appearance of the virtual agents (bots vs. humanoids). The goal of this study is to provide recommendations for crowd animation and rendering when simulating crowds. Our results show that the perceived realism of the crowd trajectories and animations is significantly higher when using a variety of animations as opposed to simply having locomotion animations, but only if we render realistic humanoids. If we can only render agents as bots, then there is no much gain from having animation variety, in fact, it could potentially lower the perceived quality of the trajectories.Peer ReviewedPostprint (author's final draft

The role of need for cognitive closure and emotions in shaping the human social interactions and driving the intergroup decision behaviour

In this thesis author investigates the role of need for closure (NCC) and emotions in shaping intergroup relations. The thesis consists of two separate parts that correspond with three studies. In the first part (Study1c with preliminary Studies 1 a and b) author assumes that level of NCC is associated with the acceptance or rejection of the offers from outgroup proposers who differ in perceived similarity to the ingroup. Specifically, the author expects that high NCC individuals will more frequently reject offers from the outgroups than low NCC individuals, and it will be especially true for dissimilar and Disgust/Anger/Fear-eliciting outgroups. The results confirmed hypotheses. In the second part (Study 2) author tests the role of NCC in bargaining behaviour in the ingroup-outgroup context using fMRI method expecting different neural activation among high and low NCC individuals while playing in Ultimatum Game. The author found cerebellar activation in conflicting situations (i.e., offer 4:6 by Outgroup proposers; offer 1:9 by Ingroup proposers, and offer 4:6 by Ingroup proposers) among high NCC (vs. low NCC) individuals. In part three (Study 3) author tests a group-effect on emotional contagion, hypothesized that being emotionally contaminated by a facial expression could interfere with a mere cognitive task in terms of accuracy and Reaction Times (RTs). The results didn’t confirm it