From individual characters to large crowds: augmenting the believability of open-world games through exploring social emotion in pedestrian groups

Crowds of non-player characters improve the game-play experiences of open-world video-games. Grouping is a common phenomenon of crowds and plays an important role in crowd behaviour. Recent crowd simulation research focuses on group modelling in pedestrian crowds and game-designers have argued that the design of non-player characters should capture and exploit the relationship between characters. The concepts of social groups and inter-character relationships are not new in social psychology, and on-going work addresses the social life of emotions and its behavioural consequences on individuals and groups alike. The aim of this paper is to provide an overview of current research in social psychology, and to use the findings as a source of inspiration to design a social network of non-player characters, with application to the problem of group modelling in simulated crowds in computer games

Psychological elements explaining the consumer's adoption and use of a website recommendation system: A theoretical framework proposal

The purpose of this paper is to understand, with an emphasis on the psychological perspective of the research problem, the consumer's adoption and use of a certain web site recommendation system as well as the main psychological outcomes involved. The approach takes the form of theoretical modelling. Findings: A conceptual model is proposed and discussed. A total of 20 research propositions are theoretically analyzed and justified. Research limitations/implications: The theoretical discussion developed here is not empirically validated. This represents an opportunity for future research. Practical implications: The ideas extracted from the discussion of the conceptual model should be a help for recommendation systems designers and web site managers, so that they may be more aware, when working with such systems, of the psychological process consumers undergo when interacting with them. In this regard, numerous practical reflections and suggestions are presented

A Study of Accomodation of Prosodic and Temporal Features in Spoken Dialogues in View of Speech Technology Applications

Inter-speaker accommodation is a well-known property of human speech and human interaction in general. Broadly it refers to the behavioural patterns of two (or more) interactants and the effect of the (verbal and non-verbal) behaviour of each to that of the other(s). Implementation of thisbehavior in spoken dialogue systems is desirable as an improvement on the naturalness of humanmachine interaction. However, traditional qualitative descriptions of accommodation phenomena do not provide sufficient information for such an implementation. Therefore, a quantitativedescription of inter-speaker accommodation is required. This thesis proposes a methodology of monitoring accommodation during a human or humancomputer dialogue, which utilizes a moving average filter over sequential frames for each speaker. These frames are time-aligned across the speakers, hence the name Time Aligned Moving Average (TAMA). Analysis of spontaneous human dialogue recordings by means of the TAMA methodology reveals ubiquitous accommodation of prosodic features (pitch, intensity and speech rate) across interlocutors, and allows for statistical (time series) modeling of the behaviour, in a way which is meaningful for implementation in spoken dialogue system (SDS) environments.In addition, a novel dialogue representation is proposed that provides an additional point of view to that of TAMA in monitoring accommodation of temporal features (inter-speaker pause length and overlap frequency). This representation is a percentage turn distribution of individual speakercontributions in a dialogue frame which circumvents strict attribution of speaker-turns, by considering both interlocutors as synchronously active. Both TAMA and turn distribution metrics indicate that correlation of average pause length and overlap frequency between speakers can be attributed to accommodation (a debated issue), and point to possible improvements in SDS “turntaking” behaviour. Although the findings of the prosodic and temporal analyses can directly inform SDS implementations, further work is required in order to describe inter-speaker accommodation sufficiently, as well as to develop an adequate testing platform for evaluating the magnitude ofperceived improvement in human-machine interaction. Therefore, this thesis constitutes a first step towards a convincingly useful implementation of accommodation in spoken dialogue systems

Deciding when to react to incremental user input in human-robot interaction

Abstract -  GCG implementation was believed will help companies and countries which were in a cricis condition rising towards to a better conditions, competitive and restore the investor confidences. Therefore, the improvement of GCG implementation in Indonesia, especially for Publicly Listed Companies became main priority because it was one of the companies’ key to successful growth as well as giving long term benefits for the companies to win the bussiness competition. Many efforts were made to improve awareness of all parties about the importance of GCG implementation in Indonesia, as well as IDX which always try to improve GCG implementation of Listed Companies.This research was done to find out the impact of GCG implementation to the market performance of the companies which listed in IDX. GCG implementation will be proxied by the value of Corporate Governance Perception Index (CGPI). While company’s market performance will be proxied by PBV ratio. Besides, this research also try to find out the impact of fundamental factors, such as ROE, ROA, DER, growth and firm size to PBV. It was done to know what should be done by IDX to improve GCG implementation of the Listed Companies. This research uses multiple regression model in SPSS to test the correlation of GCG implementation, fundamental factors and company’s market performance. The samples are companies which listed in IDX from 2010-2013, have complete financial datas, and have CGPI value which released by The Indonesia Institute of Corporate Governance (IICG) from 2010-2013. The result shows that only ROE and DER variables which have significant impact to PBV at the level of significance (α) 10%. While CGPI, ROA, growth and firm size variables do not have significant impact to PBV. Those  results show that the benefit of GCG implementation to create added value to the stakeholders is still can be reflected well yet in Indonesia because of the variation of the GCG implementation that caused by the lack of strict legal rules regarding to the GCG implementation and also lack of awareness about the need of GCG implementation. Hence, IDX as one of the regulator in Indonesian Capital Market is expected to have a strict rule regarding to GCG implementation of Listed Companies and able to improve the awareness of Listed Companies, investors, and all parties in Indonesian Capital Market about the importance of GCG implementation through educational programs, seminars, and the other forms of coaching as well as incentive and reward programs. The budget to implement those plans could use budget of routine activities as well as budget specialized for workshop or seminar activities in IDX. Keywords: Good Corporate Governance (GCG), Corporate Governance Perception Index (CGPI), ROE, DER, Multiple Regression , Bursa Efek Indonesia (IDX)

Personal Smart Assistant for Digital Media and Advertisement

The expansion of the cyberspace and the enormous process in computing and software applications enabled technology to cover every aspect of our life, therefore, many of our goals are now technology driven. Consequently, the need of intelligent assistance to achieve these goals has increased. However, for this assistance to be beneficial for users, it should be targeted to them based on their needs and preferences. Intelligent software agents have been recognized as a promising approach for the development of user-centric, personalized, applications. In this thesis a generic personal smart assistant agent is proposed that provides relevant assistance to the user based on modeling his/her interests and behaviours. The main focus of this work is on developing a user behaviour model that captures the deliberative and reactive behaviours of the user in open environments. Furthermore, a prototype is built to utilize the personal assistant for personalized advertisement applications, where this assistant attempts to recommend the right advertisement to the right person at the right time

Triggers and damages of organizational defensive routines

Existing research on organizational defensive routines (ODRs) posits that they have strong and intertwined individual and organizational components. However, the literature has not yet systematically isolated and analyzed factors at both levels that trigger ODRs. This paper first utilizes theory on organizational routines to explain the characteristics of ODRs. Next, it identifies their individual and organizational level triggers. At the individual level factors generating ODRs are general self-efficacy, locus of control, and neuroticism while those operating at the organizational level are organizational politics, red tape, and organizational structure. The paper finally explores the potential damages ODRs could cause to individuals and organizations related to individuals’ job satisfaction, work engagement, organizational ambidexterity, and organizational learning. The theoretical model in this paper builds a foundation for future empirical study and extends theoretically the nomological network of ODRs

Concentration, Competence, Confidence, and Capture: An Experimental Study of Age, Interruption-based Technostress, and Task Performance

The proliferation of information and communication technologies such as instant messenger has created an increasing number of workplace interruptions that cause employee stress and productivity losses across the world. This growth in interruptions has paralleled another trend: the graying of the workforce, signifying that the labor force is aging rapidly. Insights from theories of stress and cognitive aging suggest that older people may be particularly vulnerable to the negative consequences of interruptions. Hence, this study examines whether, how, and why technology-mediated interruptions impact stress and task performance differently for older compared to younger adults. The study develops a mediated moderation model explaining why older people may be more susceptible to the negative impacts of technology-mediated interruptions than younger people, in terms of greater mental workload, more stress, and lower performance. The model hypothesizes that age acts as a moderator of the interruption-stress relationship due to age-related differences in inhibitory effectiveness, computer experience, computer self-efficacy, and attentional capture. We refer to these age-related differences as concentration, competence, confidence, and capture, respectively, or the four Cs. We tested our model through a laboratory experiment with a 2 x 2 x 2 mixed-model design, manipulating the frequency with which interruptions appear on the screen and their salience (e.g., reddish colors). We found that age acts as a moderator of the interruption-stress link due to differences in concentration, competence, and confidence, but not capture. This study contributes to IS research by explicitly elucidating the role of age in IS phenomena, especially interruption-based technostress

Interactive sonification exploring emergent behavior applying models for biological information and listening

Sonification is an open-ended design task to construct sound informing a listener of data. Understanding application context is critical for shaping design requirements for data translation into sound. Sonification requires methodology to maintain reproducibility when data sources exhibit non-linear properties of self-organization and emergent behavior. This research formalizes interactive sonification in an extensible model to support reproducibility when data exhibits emergent behavior. In the absence of sonification theory, extensibility demonstrates relevant methods across case studies. The interactive sonification framework foregrounds three factors: reproducible system implementation for generating sonification; interactive mechanisms enhancing a listener's multisensory observations; and reproducible data from models that characterize emergent behavior. Supramodal attention research suggests interactive exploration with auditory feedback can generate context for recognizing irregular patterns and transient dynamics. The sonification framework provides circular causality as a signal pathway for modeling a listener interacting with emergent behavior. The extensible sonification model adopts a data acquisition pathway to formalize functional symmetry across three subsystems: Experimental Data Source, Sound Generation, and Guided Exploration. To differentiate time criticality and dimensionality of emerging dynamics, are applied between subsystems to maintain scale and symmetry of concurrent processes and temporal dynamics. Tuning functions accommodate sonification design strategies that yield order parameter values to render emerging patterns discoverable as well as , to reproduce desired instances for clinical listeners. Case studies are implemented with two computational models, Chua's circuit and Swarm Chemistry social agent simulation, generating data in real-time that exhibits emergent behavior. is introduced as an informal model of a listener's clinical attention to data sonification through multisensory interaction in a context of structured inquiry. Three methods are introduced to assess the proposed sonification framework: Listening Scenario classification, data flow Attunement, and Sonification Design Patterns to classify sound control. Case study implementations are assessed against these methods comparing levels of abstraction between experimental data and sound generation. Outcomes demonstrate the framework performance as a reference model for representing experimental implementations, also for identifying common sonification structures having different experimental implementations, identifying common functions implemented in different subsystems, and comparing impact of affordances across multiple implementations of listening scenarios