The Saracatinib All Your Mates Is Speaking Of

Brown-Schmidt (2012) analyzed and coded conversations between two people who had to collaborate to correctly arrange pieces in a visual game. Based on occurring frequency of different types of answers (e.g., acknowledgment, repetitions) obtained through this analysis, confederates were instructed to use specific answer forms in a subsequent experiment. Likewise, in a picture description task, Branigan et al. (2007) instructed confederates to replicate errors (e.g., use of inappropriate verbs) that were made by na?ve speakers in a previous Selleck CAL 101 Similar task. Similar procedures inspired by real life conversations could be used to make conversations between virtual and real humans more smooth. Even though these methods might improve perceived realism of the communication, they do not assure an optimal adaptation to participants�� utterances. Another possibility to achieve natural communication is to use confederates to embody virtual humans (Bailenson et al., 2005). Confederates can control the body position of the avatar (non-verbal behavior of the avatar could be standardized to some extent) while communicating in a natural way with participants. This solution would improve communication realism but it is not optimal because vocal non-verbal behavior of confederates might change across participants and therefore influence them, the detrimental effects of which have already been highlighted above. Part of the reasons why achieving a realistic communication with virtual humans is problematic is that participants can potentially address them with any kind of utterance. One possibility is to ��script�� the conversation and to provide the participant with prompts so that the conversation flows more naturally. As an example, Schmid Mast et al. (2008) investigated participants in the role of patients interacting with virtual doctors in a virtual medical consultation. Participants were briefed about their symptoms and there were 16 turns between the virtual doctor and the patient and for each turn, the patient had a prompt card instructing him/her what information to deliver to the virtual doctor (e.g., talk about your symptoms, for how long you have had them and how much they affect your daily life). This ensured a smooth flow of the conversation but it was unnatural because no spontaneous remarks or questions were allowed. Another approach was tested by Qu et al. (2013, Study 2). They used a priming procedure to induce participants to use specific keywords when addressing virtual humans. They exposed participants to videos and pictures hanging on a wall in a virtual room, in which a virtual human asked them four questions on different topics.