17,590 research outputs found

    The Role of Gestures in Mental Animation

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    We examined the use of hand gestures while people solved spatial reasoning problems in which they had to infer how components of a mechanical device will move from a static diagram of the device (mental animation problems). In Experiment 1, participants were asked to think aloud while solving mental animation problems. They gestured on more than 90% of problems, and most gestures expressed information about the component motions that was not stated in words. Two further experiments examined whether the gestures functioned in the mechanical inference process, or whether they merely served functions of expressing or communicating the results of this process. In these experiments, we examined the effects of instructions to think aloud, restricting participants' hand motions, and secondary tasks on mental animation performance. Although participants who were instructed to think aloud gestured more than control groups, some gestures occurred even in control conditions. A concurrent spatial tapping task impaired performance on mechanical reasoning, whereas a simple tapping task and restricting hand motions did not. These results indicate that gestures are a natural way of expressing the results of mental animation processes and suggest that spatial working memory and premotor representations are involved in mental animation. They provide no direct evidence that gestures are functional in the thought process itself, but do not rule out a role for overt gestures in this type of spatial thinking

    Designing gestures for affective input: an analysis of shape, effort and valence

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    We discuss a user-centered approach to incorporating affective expressions in interactive applications, and argue for a design that addresses both body and mind. In particular, we have studied the problem of finding a set of affective gestures. Based on previous work in movement analysis and emotion theory [Davies, Laban and Lawrence, Russell], and a study of an actor expressing emotional states in body movements, we have identified three underlying dimensions of movements and emotions: shape, effort and valence. From these dimensions we have created a new affective interaction model, which we name the affective gestural plane model. We applied this model to the design of gestural affective input to a mobile service for affective messages

    The nature of gestures’ beneficial role in spatial problem solving

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    Agents for educational games and simulations

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    This book consists mainly of revised papers that were presented at the Agents for Educational Games and Simulation (AEGS) workshop held on May 2, 2011, as part of the Autonomous Agents and MultiAgent Systems (AAMAS) conference in Taipei, Taiwan. The 12 full papers presented were carefully reviewed and selected from various submissions. The papers are organized topical sections on middleware applications, dialogues and learning, adaption and convergence, and agent applications

    Which way to turn? Guide orientation in virtual way finding

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    In this paper we describe an experiment aimed at determining the most effective and natural orientation of a virtual guide that gives route directions in a 3D virtual environment. We hypothesized that, due to the presence of mirrored gestures, having the route provider directly face the route seeker would result in a less effective and less natural route description than having the route provider adapt his orientation to that of the route seeker. To compare the effectiveness of the different orientations, after having received a route description the participants in our experiment had to ‘virtually’ traverse the route using prerecorded route segments. The results showed no difference in effectiveness between the two orientations, but suggested that the orientation where the speaker directly faces the route seeker is more natural

    Virtual reality: Theoretical basis, practical applications

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    Virtual reality (VR) is a powerful multimedia visualization technique offering a range of mechanisms by which many new experiences can be made available. This paper deals with the basic nature of VR, the technologies needed to create it, and its potential, especially for helping disabled people. It also offers an overview of some examples of existing VR systems
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