Achieving Affective Impact: Visual Emotive Communication in Lifelike Pedagogical Agents
In IJAIED
10 (3): "'Best of ITS 98' Special Issue "
Publication information
Abstract
Lifelike animated agents for knowledge-based learning environments can provide
timely, customized advice to support learners' problem-solving activities. By drawing on a rich
repertoire of emotive behaviors to exhibit contextually appropriate facial expressions and
emotive gestures, these agents could exploit the visual channel to more effectively communicate
with learners. To address these issues, this article proposes the emotive-kinesthetic behavior
sequencing framework for dynamically sequencing lifelike pedagogical agents' full-body
emotive expression. By exploiting a rich behavior space populated with emotive behaviors and
structured by pedagogical speech act categories, a behavior sequencing engine operates in
realtime to select and assemble contextually appropriate expressive behaviors. This framework
has been implemented in a lifelike pedagogical agent, COSMO, who exhibits full-body emotive
behaviors in response to learners' problem-solving activities.
