Planning Smalltalk Behavior with Cultural Influences for Multiagent Systems

International audienceThere are several factors that inuence communicative behavior, such as gen- der, personality or culture. As virtual agents interact in a more and more human-like manner, their behavior should be dependent on social factors as well. Culture is a phenomenon that a_ects one's behavior without one realiz- ing it. Behavior is thus sometimes perceived as inappropriate because there is no awareness of the cultural gap. Thus, we think cultural background should also inuence the communication behavior of virtual agents. Behav- ioral di_erences are sometimes easy to recognize by humans but still hard to describe formally, to enable integration into a system that automatically generates culture-speci_c behavior. In our work, we focus on culture-related di_erences in the domain of casual Small Talk. Our model of culture-related di_erences in Small Talk behavior is based on _ndings described in the lit- erature as well as on a video corpus that was recorded in Germany and Japan. In a validation study, we provide initial evidence that our simulation of culture-speci_c Small Talk with virtual agents is perceived di_erently by human observers. We thus implemented a system that automatically gener- ates culture-speci_c Small Talk dialogs for virtual agents

Werewolves, cheats, and cultural sensitivity

This paper discusses the design and evaluation of the system MIXER (Moderating Interactions for Cross-Cultural Empathic Relationships), which applies a novel approach to the education of children in cultural sensitivity. MIXER incorporates intelligent affective and interactive characters, including a model of a Theory of Mind mechanism, in a simulated virtual world. We discuss the relevant pedagogical approaches, related work, the underlying mind model used for MIXER agents as well as its innovative interaction interface utilising a tablet computer and a pictorial interaction language. We then consider the evaluation of the system, whether this shows it met its pedagogical objectives, and what can be learned from our results.</p