How to make a robot smile? Perception of emotional expressions from digitally-extracted facial landmark configurations

Abstract. To design robots or embodied conversational agents that can accurately display facial expressions indicating an emotional state, we need technology to produce those facial expressions, and research that investigates the relationship between those technologies and human social perception of those artificial faces. Our starting point is assessing human perception of core facial information: Moving dots representing the facial landmarks, i.e., the locations and movements of the crucial parts of a face. Earlier research suggested that participants can relatively accurately identity facial expressions when all they can see of a real human full face are moving white painted dots representing the facial landmarks (although less accurate than recognizing full faces). In the current study we investigated the accuracy of recognition of emotions expressed by comparable facial landmarks (compared to accuracy of recognition of emotions expressed by full faces), but now used face-tracking software to produce the facial landmarks. In line with earlier findings, results suggested that participants could accurately identify emotions expressed by the facial landmarks (though less accurately than those expressed by full faces). Thereby, these results provide a starting point for further research on the fundamental characteristics of technology (AI methods) producing facial emotional expressions and their evaluation by human users

Are First Impressions about Websites Only Related to Visual Appeal?

Part 2: Long and Short PapersInternational audienceThis paper investigates whether immediate impression about websites influences only perceptions of attractiveness. The evaluative constructs of perceived usability, credibility and novelty were investigated alongside visual appeal in an experimental setting in which users evaluated 20 website screenshots in two phases. The websites were rated by the participants after viewing time of 500 ms in the first phase and with no time limit in the second. Within-website and within-rater consistency were examined in order to determine whether extremely short time period are enough to quickly form stable opinions about high level evaluative constructs besides visual appeal. We confirmed that quick and stable visual appeal judgments were made without the need of elaborate investigations and found evidence that this is also true for novelty. Usability and credibility judgments were found less consistent but nonetheless noteworthy