At Face Value

We are interested in increasing the ability of groups to collaborate efficiently by leveraging new advances in AI and Conversational Agent (CA) technology. Given the longstanding debate on the necessity of embodiment for CAs, bringing them to groups requires answering the questions of whether and how providing a CA with a face affects its interaction with the humans in a group. We explored these questions by comparing group decision-making sessions facilitated by an embodied agent, versus a voice-only agent. Results of an experiment with 20 user groups revealed that while the embodiment improved various aspects of group's social perception of the agent (e.g., rapport, trust, intelligence, and power), its impact on the group-decision process and outcome was nuanced. Drawing on both quantitative and qualitative findings, we discuss the pros and cons of embodiment, argue that the value of having a face depends on the types of assistance the agent provides, and lay out directions for future research.

[1]  Pierre Jouvelot,et al.  Field evaluation with cognitively-impaired older adults of attention management in the Embodied Conversational Agent Louise , 2016, 2016 IEEE International Conference on Serious Games and Applications for Health (SeGAH).

[2]  Ning Wang,et al.  Creating Rapport with Virtual Agents , 2007, IVA.

[3]  Michael Doyle,et al.  Facilitator's Guide to Participatory Decision-Making , 1998 .

[4]  Susanne van Mulken,et al.  The impact of animated interface agents: a review of empirical research , 2000, Int. J. Hum. Comput. Stud..

[5]  Bodo Winter,et al.  A Very Basic Tutorial for Performing Linear Mixed Effects Analyses: Tutorial 2 , 2015 .

[6]  Elisabeth André,et al.  An empirical study on the trustworthiness of life-like interface agents , 1999, HCI.

[7]  Tetsunori Kobayashi,et al.  Four-participant group conversation: A facilitation robot controlling engagement density as the fourth participant , 2015, Comput. Speech Lang..

[8]  V. Carey,et al.  Mixed-Effects Models in S and S-Plus , 2001 .

[9]  Amy Ogan,et al.  Rudeness and Rapport: Insults and Learning Gains in Peer Tutoring , 2012, ITS.

[10]  Justine Cassell,et al.  BEAT: the Behavior Expression Animation Toolkit , 2001, Life-like characters.

[11]  Mark Stefik,et al.  Cognoter: theory and practice of a colab-orative tool , 1986, CSCW '86.

[12]  Filip Radlinski,et al.  Towards Conversational Recommender Systems , 2016, KDD.

[13]  Jeremy N. Bailenson,et al.  A meta-analysis of the impact of the inclusion and realism of human-like faces on user experiences in interfaces , 2007, CHI.

[14]  Elisabeth André,et al.  The Persona Effect: How Substantial Is It? , 1998, BCS HCI.

[15]  G. Norman.  Likert scales, levels of measurement and the “laws” of statistics , 2010, Advances in health sciences education : theory and practice.

[16]  Estelle Michinov,et al.  Face-to-face contact at the midpoint of an online collaboration: Its impact on the patterns of participation, interaction, affect, and behavior over time , 2008, Comput. Educ..

[17]  James C. Lester,et al.  The Case for Social Agency in Computer-Based Teaching: Do Students Learn More Deeply When They Interact With Animated Pedagogical Agents? , 2001 .

[18]  Frank Biocca,et al.  The Effect of the Agency and Anthropomorphism on Users' Sense of Telepresence, Copresence, and Social Presence in Virtual Environments , 2003, Presence: Teleoperators & Virtual Environments.

[19]  Justine Cassell,et al.  External manifestations of trustworthiness in the interface , 2000, CACM.

[20]  Ronald K. Thornton,et al.  Assessing student learning of Newton’s laws: The Force and Motion Conceptual Evaluation and the Evaluation of Active Learning Laboratory and Lecture Curricula , 1998 .

[21]  Jay F. Nunamaker,et al.  Embodied Conversational Agent-Based Kiosk for Automated Interviewing , 2011, J. Manag. Inf. Syst..

[22]  Laurel D. Riek,et al.  Wizard of Oz studies in HRI , 2012, J. Hum. Robot Interact..

[23]  Lee Sproull,et al.  Using a human face in an interface , 1994, CHI '94.

[24]  T. Koda,et al.  Agents with faces: the effect of personification , 1996, Proceedings 5th IEEE International Workshop on Robot and Human Communication. RO-MAN'96 TSUKUBA.

[25]  Jay F. Nunamaker,et al.  Electronic meeting systems , 1991, CACM.

[26]  A. L. Baylor.  Promoting motivation with virtual agents and avatars: role of visual presence and appearance , 2009, Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences.

[27]  Peter Cook,et al.  Project Nick: meetings augmentation and analysis , 1986, CSCW '86.

[28]  John C. Tang,et al.  More to Meetings: Challenges in Using Speech-Based Technology to Support Meetings , 2017, CSCW.

[29]  Ran Zhao,et al.  Towards a Dyadic Computational Model of Rapport Management for Human-Virtual Agent Interaction , 2014, IVA.

[30]  Andreas Butz,et al.  SupportingTrust in Autonomous Driving , 2017, IUI.

[31]  Shelly Farnham,et al.  Structured online interactions: improving the decision-making of small discussion groups , 2000, CSCW '00.

[32]  Martin Porcheron,et al.  Using Mobile Phones in Pub Talk , 2016, CSCW.

[33]  Eric Horvitz,et al.  Facilitating multiparty dialog with gaze, gesture, and speech , 2010, ICMI-MLMI '10.

[34]  David G. Novick,et al.  Building Rapport between Human and ECA: A Pilot Study , 2014, HCI.

[35]  Gerardine DeSanctis,et al.  Conflict management and group decision support systems , 1988, CSCW '88.

[36]  Gerardine DeSanctis,et al.  A foundation for the study of group decision support systems , 1987 .

[37]  J. Cassell,et al.  Embodied conversational agents , 2000 .

[38]  Carolyn Penstein Rosé,et al.  Architecture for Building Conversational Agents that Support Collaborative Learning , 2011, IEEE Transactions on Learning Technologies.

[39]  Joshua Introne.  Supporting group decisions by mediating deliberation to improve information pooling , 2009, GROUP '09.

[40]  James C. Lester,et al.  Life-Like Pedagogical Agents in Constructivist Multimedia Environments: Cognitive Consequences of their Interaction , 2000 .

[41]  Justine Cassell,et al.  Embodied Conversational Agents: Representation and Intelligence in User Interfaces , 2001, AI Mag..

[42]  Timothy Bickmore,et al.  Taking the time to care: empowering low health literacy hospital patients with virtual nurse agents , 2009, CHI.

[43]  Dana Kulic,et al.  Measurement Instruments for the Anthropomorphism, Animacy, Likeability, Perceived Intelligence, and Perceived Safety of Robots , 2009, Int. J. Soc. Robotics.

[44]  J. V. Kuppevelt,et al.  Advances in natural multimodal dialogue systems , 2005 .

[45]  S. R. Hiltz,et al.  Experiments in group decision making: Communication process and outcome in face-to-face versus computerized conferences. , 1986 .

[46]  K. Chang,et al.  Embodiment in conversational interfaces: Rea , 1999, CHI '99.

[47]  Akikazu Takeuchi,et al.  Situated facial displays: towards social interaction , 1995, CHI '95.

[48]  Kenji Araki,et al.  The Role of Embodiment and Perspective in Direction-Giving Systems , 2010, AAAI Fall Symposium: Dialog with Robots.

[49]  Robert P. Bostrom,et al.  Meeting facilitation: process versus content interventions , 1997, Proceedings of the Thirtieth Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences.

[50]  A. Zander.  Making Groups Effective , 1982 .

[51]  Oli Mival,et al.  Wizard of Oz experiments and companion dialogues , 2010, BCS HCI.

[52]  Arne Jönsson,et al.  Wizard of Oz studies -- why and how , 1993, Knowl. Based Syst..

[53]  Arthur C. Graesser,et al.  AutoTutor: an intelligent tutoring system with mixed-initiative dialogue , 2005, IEEE Transactions on Education.

[54]  R. Atkinson.  Optimizing learning from examples using animated pedagogical agents. , 2002 .

[55]  Stephen Viller,et al.  The Group Facilitator: A CSCW Perspective , 1991, ECSCW.

[56]  Stacey D. Scott,et al.  The NiCE Discussion Room: Integrating Paper and Digital Media to Support Co-Located Group Meetings , 2010, CHI.

[57]  Justine Cassell,et al.  Relational agents: a model and implementation of building user trust , 2001, CHI.

[58]  James C. Lester,et al.  The persona effect: affective impact of animated pedagogical agents , 1997, CHI.

[59]  Abigail Sellen,et al.  "Like Having a Really Bad PA": The Gulf between User Expectation and Experience of Conversational Agents , 2016, CHI.

[60]  Vanda Broughton,et al.  Sage Dictionary of Statistics: A Practical Resource for Students in the Social Sciences , 2005 .

[61]  J. Cassell,et al.  Social Dialongue with Embodied Conversational Agents , 2005 .

[62]  J. Cassell,et al.  SOCIAL DIALOGUE WITH EMBODIED CONVERSATIONAL AGENTS , 2005 .

[63]  Heloir,et al.  The Uncanny Valley , 2019, The Animation Studies Reader.