Towards the Simulation of Social Interactions through Embodied Conversational Agents

In this paper, we present a pluridisciplinary approach in order to model the behavior of an embodied conversational agent that expresses emotional and social interactions. We present our methodology to reproduce credible social interactions. Particularly, we discuss the role of the context, the culture, and the emotions in the model of the management of speech acts. This model has been implemented in the context of virtual therapy to simulate the interaction between a therapist and a post-CVA patient.