Graphics Reference
In-Depth Information
CHAPTER 10
A Survey of Listener Behavior
and Listener Models for
Embodied Conversational
Agents
Elisabetta Bevacqua
1. Introduction
One of the major issues that must be pursued when developing
Embodied Conversational Agents (ECAs) is to create virtual humanoids
able to sustain natural and satisfying interactions with users. For this,
ECAs must be endowed with human-like capabilities not only while
speaking but also while listening. In human-human communications,
interlocutors show their participation in the dialogue, to push it forward
and make the speaker go on. Similarly, in user-ECA interactions, agents
must not freeze while the user is speaking since the absence of the
appropriate behavior would deteriorate the quality of the interaction.
In this chapter, the behavior of listeners is investigated as well as the
efforts made by researchers on the one hand to gain insight into the
signals performed by interlocutors and on the other hand to develop
computational models to generate the listener behavior for ECAs while
interacting with a user.
Communication takes place when a response is elicited (Gumperz,
1982). Therefore, human-human communication is not a one-way
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