THE INFLUENCE OF USER ’ S PERSONALITY AND GENDER ON THE PROCESSING OF VIRTUAL AGENTS ’ MULTIMODAL BEHAVIOR

Embodied Conversational Agents (ECAs) are virtual characters appearing in computer interfaces and interacting with users via speech, gestures and facial expressions. They are expected to enhance naturalness and intuitiveness of humancomputer interaction, especially in assistance or e-learning contexts. Previous studies of multimedia educational appliances have shown that the behavioral strategy of the virtual tutor agent can influence the efficiency of the lesson: for example, if the agent’s speech and gesture are redundant, learning increases. Likewise, users’ personality may also influence the interaction with the agent and the processing of the lesson. The present chapter reports on a study about the effects of users’ personality (Introversion / Extraversion) on the processing of the agent’s behavior: are extraverts and introverts influenced to the same extent by the agent’s communication strategy? We first review psychology literature about the behavioral and cognitive correlates of Introversion / Extraversion, as well as previous studies using ECAs for investigating similar topics. Since theoretical predictions appear inconsistent, we built our own experiment: 81 users (38 extraverts and 43 introverts) attended short presentations performed by ECAs and had to recall the content of presentations and to evaluate the agents. Our results show a subtle interaction between personality and gender: all users but female introverts were influenced by the virtual tutor’s behavioral strategy. We discuss this result in terms of the influence of personality on learning cognitive processes. We also discuss the usefulness of ECA platforms as a research tool for conducting Psychology experiments and enriching existing models of human behavior. * Corresponding author: E-mail : stephanie.buisine@paris.ensam.fr, Phone: +33.1.44.24.63.77, Fax: +33.1.44.24.63.59 Stéphanie Buisine and Jean-Claude Martin 2

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