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Is there an Uncanny Valley of Virtual Animals? A Quantitative and Qualitative Investigation
Abstract
Approaching a high degree of realism, android robots, and virtual humans may evoke uncomfortable feelings. Due to technologies that increase the realism of human replicas, this phenomenon, which is known as the uncanny valley, has been frequently highlighted in recent years by researchers from various fields. Although virtual animals play an important role in video games and entertainment, the question whether there is also an uncanny valley for virtual animals has been little investigated. This paper examines whether very realistic virtual pets tend to cause a similar aversion as humanlike characters. We conducted two empirical studies using cat renderings to investigate the effects of realism, stylization, and facial expressions of virtual cats on human perception. Through qualitative feedback, we gained deeper insight into the perception of realistic computer-generated animals. Our results indicate that depicting virtual animal-like characters at realism levels used in current video games causes negative reactions just as the uncanny valley predicts for humanlike characters. We conclude design implication to avoid that sensation and suggest that virtual animals should either be given a completely natural or a stylized appearance. We propose to further examine the uncanny valley by the inclusion of artificial animals.
... Specific figures on the number of people in society that experience the UV effect have not been located, however, research indicates that the phenomenon is a common occurrence in cultures worldwide. Negative reactions said to occur as a result of the UV effect include mistrust (Gayles, 2019), aversion (Strait, 2016), and revulsion (Kimura, 2016;Mori, 1970;Rosenthal-von der Pütten, 2015;Schwind, 2018) and are similar to the negative reactions reported in the literature on technological fears and phobias. Because such negative reactions as the UV effect can serve as impediments to the willingness to use technology (Zarina 2018), digital services such as education (Chen, 2008;Klein, 2020;MacGillis, 2020;Meckler, 2020;Lewis, 2020) and healthcare (Baker, 2016;Stern, 2019) could be discounted due to these reactions. ...
... Experts have recognized the importance of UV research to HRI and have posited its effects on the entities present in onsite and online social and service industries (Baggaley, 2010;Ciechanowski, 2019;Garner, 2016;Gee, 2005;Gray, 2012;Kanowitz, 2019;Lewkowicz, 2012;Matsuda, 2012;Robotics Industry Association, 2019;Schwind, 2018;van den Berg, 2010). Within a span of almost ten years, the presence of robots in these industries more than doubled. ...
... Building on the observances of seminal authors, later researchers questioned might other nonliving beings activate an uncanny response. In answering this question, entities such as clowns (Pollick, 2009;Wang, 2015), toys (Lu, 2017), virtual animals (Schwind, 2018), virtual film characters (Kätsyria, 2017), videogame characters (Schneider, 2007), avatars (Ciechanowski, 2019;Schwind, 2018), chatbots (Ciechanowski, 2019;Skjuve, 2019), and online social (van den Berg, 2010), healthcare (Stern, 2019) and educational platforms (Gabay, n.d.) also became the subject of UV discussions and research. ...
This systematic literature review (SLR) explored the uncanny valley (UV) effect as related to human-robot interaction (HRI). The purpose of this SLR was to investigate the variables of the UV effect to find recommendations from the results that would reduce occurrence of the phenomenon. Using a textual narrative synthesis approach, a six-step methodology was used to answer three research questions: 1.) What HRI variables predict the UV effect? 2.) When considering HRI, what other variables are related to the UV effect? 3.) What recommendations can be made that would potentially reduce the UV effect that occurs during HRI? Anthropomorphism, human-likeness, mind perception, agency, experience, combination and mismatch variables, and movement emerged as variables that predict the UV effect. Other variables discovered to be related to the UV effect included human age, robot identity, and disclosure and transparency. Recommendations for reducing the UV effect include revealing a robot’s identity, aligning robot identity, function, and user, and designing robots that look like cartoons and caricatures. Recommendations for future HRI-UV research are discussed as well.
... Another method is to design frameworks for training virtual agents to minimise the difference between an agent and human behaviour performing the same task [23]. The interest in designing and training virtual animals [24] shows that autonomous agents in VR are not restricted to humanoid creatures. There is a straightforward application of virtual agent design in the gaming industry. ...
... Another XR/AI interaction domain identified in the study [16] was the gaming industry. AI was also used to create NPCs and to build a virtual environment where NPCs could be trained [21][22][23][24]. The research also included generation techniques of virtual animals that resemble realistic behaviour [24,37]. ...
... AI was also used to create NPCs and to build a virtual environment where NPCs could be trained [21][22][23][24]. The research also included generation techniques of virtual animals that resemble realistic behaviour [24,37]. E-commerce, marketing, and customer behaviour analytics is a domain that employs DS and AI tools and shows a significant potential value source for commercial organisations. ...
Metaverse, virtual reality, data science, and artificial intelligence are buzzwords that attract the attention of tech enthusiasts and corporate managers. The following article is a literature review that integrates the emerging domains of virtual reality/metaverse and artificial intelligence/data science into good use cases from a commercial perspective. As the result of the analysis, we propose four strategies that commercial organizations can use to harness the synergy of these domains for successful and effective Value Innovation management.
... Realism is predominantly framed as a continuum rather than a binary construct. However what constitutes the non-realistic end of this continuum varies across the literature: For example, low quality [81] or substantial difference to the targeted realistic referent [95] occurs as such, but most commonly it is stylization/abstraction/lack of detail [64,71,148,180,182]. ...
... Realism is considered to have "a notable influence" [145], and in its various forms is "deeply rooted in all forms of entertainment [...,] involved in the active participating nature of video games [... and] an essential element of players' arousal and affect" [92]. It is reported to be a preference (e.g., [10,26,49,112,125,148,175,182]) and a positive factor for PX [33,53,70,112,172,[180][181][182]; it is used in marketing [15,34], and is considered a goal of game design [41,120]. ...
... In constructing this theme, we note that realism is also often positioned in a trade-off relationship with other factors: narrative ("the competition between historical narratives and a fictional cinematic space" [34]), feelings of safety (in alarming VR experiences [89], haptics of unpleasant sensations [62], and avoiding real-world repercussions [26]), resources [8,84,181] or other costs like increasing likelihood of lag [81], as well as aesthetics ("cat depictions with the lowest realism ratings receive[d] significantly higher aesthetic ratings" [148]). Fun and user experience are also framed in trade-off with realism: "in gaming, it becomes necessary to reduce the realism of the game [...] to improve the player's pleasure and engagement" [33]. ...
Researchers reference realism in digital games without sufficient specificity. Without clarity about the dimensions of realism, we cannot assess how and when to aim for a higher degree of realism, when lower realism suffices, or when purposeful unrealism is ideal for a game and can benefit player experience (PX). To address this conceptual gap, we conducted a systematic review using thematic synthesis to distinguish between types of realism currently found in the digital games literature. We contribute qualitative themes that showcase contradictory design goals of realism/unrealism. From these themes, we created a framework (i.e., a hierarchical taxonomy and mapping) of realism dimensions in digital games as a conceptual foundation. Our themes and framework enable a workable specificity for designing or analyzing types of realism, equip future work to explore effects of specific realism types on PX, and offer a starting point for similar efforts in non-game applications.
... In this context, researchers have evaluated the impact of virtual humans used as pedagogical agents, bots, chatbots, virtual android robots, and avatars. 3,4 Recent work by Schwind et al. 5 established the possibility to analyze the uncanny valley hypothesis for virtual animals as well. However, in their work, a human-likeness scale was employed rather than an animal-likeness scale. ...
... The first study, by Schneider et al., 14 reported that non-human characters (e.g., animals and robots) are perceived favorably if they display human-like features. The second study, developed by Schwind et al., 5 noted that it is possible to avoid the uncanny valley for a virtual animal when it is completely natural or when it has a stylized appearance. Their study concentrated on how realism has an effect on a virtual animal (e.g., a cat). ...
... Researchers have explored the relationship between the uncanny valley effect on familiarity. 5,8,10,19 However, here we extend this work and use the panda to investigate not only its familiarity aspect, but also attractiveness, commonality, naturalness, interestingness, and animateness traits in a virtual setting. ...
Virtual robots, including virtual animals, are expected to play a major role within affective and aesthetic interfaces, serious games, video instruction, and the personalization of educational instruction. Their actual impact, however, will very much depend on user perception of virtual characters as the uncanny valley hypothesis has shown that the design of virtual characters determines user experiences. In this article, we investigated whether the uncanny valley effect, which has already been found for the human-like appearance of virtual characters, can also be found for animal-like appearances. We conducted an online study (N = 163) in which six different animal designs were evaluated in terms of the following properties: familiarity, commonality, naturalness, attractiveness, interestingness, and animateness. The study participants differed in age (under 10–60 years) and origin (Europe, Asia, North America, and South America). For the evaluation of the results, we ranked the animal-likeness of the character using both expert opinion and participant judgments. Next to that, we investigated the effect of movement and morbidity. The results confirm the existence of the uncanny valley effect for virtual animals, especially with respect to familiarity and commonality, for both still and moving images. The effect was particularly pronounced for morbid images. For naturalness and attractiveness, the effect was only present in the expert-based ranking, but not in the participant-based ranking. No uncanny valley effect was detected for interestingness and animateness. This investigation revealed that the appearance of virtual animals directly affects user perception and thus, presumably, impacts user experience when used in applied settings.
... VR provides a range of benefits such as user immersion and presence in the environment, the ability to potentially interact with a virtual object (such as a pet), the ability to elicit an increased degree of emotion, and the viewing area is much greater compared to 2D formats and is often, but not always, controlled by natural user movement (Lin et al., 2017). However, the degree of immersion, presence, perceptions and interactions in VR may be influenced by a variety of factors such as equipment, user's knowledge and experience, virtual environment, model development and appearance/quality/ realism (e.g., the "Uncanny Valley" as previously seen using realistic and unrealistic images of cats and dogs) (Yamada et al., 2013;Lin et al., 2017;Schwind et al., 2018). ...
... Judging the quality of dog models is important due to the potential impact it has on a user's behaviour towards and interpretation of the dog. Previous research has highlighted that the impact of model quality and design (i.e., anthropomorphic features, naturalness, stylisation) could relate to the perceived realism of virtual animals (Schwind et al., 2018). For example, Schwind et al. (2018) note that if a virtual animals appearance deviates from its natural appearance (e.g., human facial expressions), or movement, then this can result in negative perceptions (e.g., eerie sensation/uncanny valley) of the virtual animals and may have the potential to affect interactions with them. ...
... Previous research has highlighted that the impact of model quality and design (i.e., anthropomorphic features, naturalness, stylisation) could relate to the perceived realism of virtual animals (Schwind et al., 2018). For example, Schwind et al. (2018) note that if a virtual animals appearance deviates from its natural appearance (e.g., human facial expressions), or movement, then this can result in negative perceptions (e.g., eerie sensation/uncanny valley) of the virtual animals and may have the potential to affect interactions with them. In contrast one study, used a VR HMD (Oculus Rift) to view 360 degree videos of real dogs with positive results (Farrell et al., 2021). ...
Virtual reality is beneficial from a research and education perspective as it allows the assessment of participants in situations that would otherwise be ethically and practically difficult or impossible to study in the real world. This is especially the case where the assessment of human behaviour in the presence of stimuli (e.g. an aggressive dog) is being measured which could potentially constitute a risk in a real-world environment (e.g. a dog bite). Given that the dog is the most popular companion animal species, to date there is limited research that identifies and reviews the use of virtual and augmented reality directly relating to human-dog interactions. Furthermore, there also appears to be no review of the equipment and dog model specifications, such as dog breed and behaviours, which are currently used in these studies. As a result, this systematic scoping review searched ten databases to assess the current use and specifications of dog models which directly focused on human-dog interactions. Ten articles were identified. Six related to assessment or treatment of dog fear/phobia (cynophobia), three included multiple animal phobias, including dogs, and one article investigated the human and virtual dog interactions whilst walking. Six articles used a single breed (German Shepherd, Beagle, Doberman, and Rottweiler). Both the breed and behaviours displayed lacked justification and were often not evidence based. Specific measurements of model quality (e.g., polygons/vertices) were reported in only two articles which may affect repeatability and make comparisons between studies difficult. The virtual reality equipment (e.g. CAVE, head mounted display) and navigation methods (e.g. joystick, mouse, room scale walking) used varied between studies. In conclusion, there is a need for the accurate development and representation, including appearance and behaviours, of dog models in virtual and augmented reality. This is of high importance especially as most of the research covered in this review was conducted with the aim to treat the fear or phobia of dogs.
... These conceptualizations often stem from different theories and their assumptions about elicitors of the effect (Diel & MacDorman, 2021). They include 1. a function like Mori's graph that maps a given degree of human likeness to a level of affect (Bartneck et al., 2009a;Burleigh, Schoenherr, & Lacroix, 2013;Chen, Russel, Nakayama, & Livingstone, 2010;Gray & Wegner, 2012;Kätsyri, de Gelder, & Takala, 2019;Lin et al, 2021;Ramey, 2005;Sasaki, Ihaya, & Yamada, 2017;Schneider, Wang, & Yang, 2009;Schwind et al., 2018;Seyama & Nagayama, 2007); 2. deviations from norms of human appearance and movement (Chaminade, Hodgins, & Kawato, 2007;MacDorman & Ishiguro, 2006;Mathur & Reichling, 2016;Palomäki et al., 2018;Seyama & Nagayama, 2007;Tinwell & Grimshaw, 2009;Tinwell, Grimshaw, & Nabi, 2014); 3. violations of expectations of human appearance and behavior (Bartneck et al., 2009a;MacDorman & Ishiguro, 2006); 4. sensitivity to nonhuman features that increases with an entity's human likeness Green, MacDorman, Ho, & Vasudevan, 2008;MacDorman, Srinivas, & Patel, 2013); 5. a mismatch between human and nonhuman features (Ho & MacDorman, 2010;MacDorman, Green, Koch, & Ho, 2009;Mitchell et al., 2011b;Moore, 2012;Takahashi, Fukuda, Samejima, Watanabe, & Ueda, 2015;Tinwell & Sloan, 2014); 6. entities that elicit the concept human but have nonhuman traits (Steckenfinger & Ghazanfar, 2009); and 7. difficulty distinguishing between categories, such as human and robot, or a conflict between categories (Cheetham, Pavlović, Jordan, Suter, & Jäncke, 2013;Cheetham, Suter, & Jäncke, 2011, 2014Cheetham, Wu, Pauli, & Jäncke, 2015;. ( ...
... Research corroborates the multidimensionality of human likeness in exploring the relation between the UV effect and an entity's physical (MacDorman & Ishiguro, 2006;Seyama & Nagayama, 2007), behavioral (MacDorman et al., 2005;Złotowski et al., 2015), and perceived mental similarity to humans (Gray & Wegner, 2012;Stein & Ohler, 2017). The perception of nonhuman animals can also elicit the UV effect Löffler, Dörenbächer, & Hassenzahl, 2020;Schwind et al., 2018;Takahashi et al., 2015;Yamada, Kawabe, & Ihaya, 2013). This result casts doubt on whether the independent variable solely concerns human likeness. ...
... Aesthetics: Items measuring aesthetic appeal (Sansoni, Wodehouse, McFayden, & Buis, 2015;Schwind et al., 2018). These items conceptualize the UV effect as a lack of physical attractiveness. ...
The uncanny valley (UV) effect is a negative affective reaction to human-looking artificial entities. It hinders comfortable, trust-based interactions with android robots and virtual characters. Despite extensive research, a consensus has not formed on its theoretical basis or methodologies. We conducted a meta-analysis to assess operationalizations of human likeness (independent variable) and the UV effect (dependent variable). Of 468 studies, 72 met the inclusion criteria. The studies employed 10 different stimulus creation techniques, 39 affect measures, and 14 indirect measures. Based on 247 effect sizes, a three-level meta-analysis model revealed the UV effect had a large effect size, Hedges' g = 1.01 [0.80, 1.22]. A mixed-effects meta-regression model with creation technique as the moderator variable revealed face distortion produced the largest effect size, g = 1.46 [0.69, 2.24], followed by distinct entities, g = 1.20 [1.02, 1.38], realism render, g = 0.99 [0.62, 1.36], and morphing, g = 0.94 [0.64, 1.24]. Affective indices producing the largest effects were threatening, likable, aesthetics, familiarity, and eeriness, and indirect measures were dislike frequency, categorization reaction time, like frequency, avoidance, and viewing duration. This meta-analysis-the first on the UV effect-provides a methodological foundation and design principles for future research.
... Some studies instead represent the x-axis of Mori's graph as perceived realism (e.g. Schwind, Leicht, Jäger, Wolf, & Henze, 2018). Incremental transitions along the dimension are created by morphing (MacDorman & Ishiguro, 2006), editing (Mäkäräinen et al., 2014), or selecting stimuli (Mathur et al., 2020). ...
... Because the mechanism is applied only to hominins, mate selection theory predicts that only humanlike entities elicit the UV effect. However, previous research has found that nonhuman animal stimuli also elicit the UV effect (Löffler, Dörrenbächer, & Hassenzahl, 2020;MacDorman & Chattopadhyay, 2017;Schwind et al., 2018;Yamada et al., 2013). ...
... Threat avoidance theories exclude nonanimal stimuli as elicitors of the UV effect, and mate selection and psychopathy avoidance theories exclude nonhuman animal stimuli as well. Our results showed that nonhuman animal stimuli elicited a UV effect, reproducing past findings (Löffler et al., 2020;Schwind et al., 2018;Yamada, Kawabe, & Ihaya, 2013). Moreover, our results also showed that nonanimal stimuli elicited a UV effect. ...
In 1970, Masahiro Mori proposed the uncanny valley (UV), a region in a human-likeness continuum where an entity risks eliciting a cold, eerie, repellent feeling. Recent studies have shown that this feeling can be elicited by entities modeled not only on humans but also nonhuman animals. The perceptual and cognitive mechanisms underlying the UV effect are not well understood, although many theories have been proposed to explain them. To test the predictions of nine classes of theories, a within-subjects experiment was conducted with 136 participants. The theories' predictions were compared with ratings of 10 classes of stimuli on eeriness and coldness indices. One type of theory, configural processing, predicted eight out of nine significant effects. Atypicality, in its extended form, in which the uncanny valley effect is amplified by the stimulus appearing more human, also predicted eight. Threat avoidance predicted seven; atypicality, perceptual mismatch, and mismatch+ predicted six; category+, novelty avoidance, mate selection, and psychopathy avoidance predicted five; and category uncertainty predicted three. Empathy's main prediction was not supported. Given that the number of significant effects predicted depends partly on our choice of hypotheses, a detailed consideration of each result is advised. We do, however, note the methodological value of examining many competing theories in the same experiment.
... However, past a certain point, they risk appearing cold and eerie, turning our affinity into aversion. From 2005, empirical research has reproduced this uncanny valley effect-not only for robotic and virtual simulations of humans but across a range of other categories, including animals (Löffler et al., 2020;Schwind et al., 2018;Sierra Rativa et al., 2022;Steckenfinger & Ghazanfar, 2009;Takahashi et al., 2015;Yamada et al., 2013) and inanimate objects (Diel & MacDorman, 2021;. However, we are especially sensitive to imperfections in human appearance, amplifying the creepiness of our digital doubles . ...
... Mori (2012) proposed the uncanny valley in 1970, observing how imperfections in humanlike figures could elicit eeriness. Since then, his concept has been extended to animals and inanimate objects (Diel & MacDorman, 2021;Löffler et al., 2020;Schwind et al., 2018;Yamada et al., 2012Yamada et al., , 2013. In this study, plotting the uncanniness and pleasantness of AI and other foods against their realism resulted in the same U-shaped curve, thereby extending the uncanny valley to food. ...
... They refer to the distractive qualities of highly realistic applications, hindering learning and training effects. Others even found evidence of aesthetic preferences towards less realistic visuals [33]. It is further suggested that reduced realism might be needed for player engagement in gaming [4]. ...
... Other methods of measuring subjective realism investigate the level of presence that the participants experience. Slater et al. and Schwind et al. show that people experience higher presence in high-realism environments [35,33], which is why it has been used as a proxy indicator of realism. However, other papers [32,1] discuss that perceived realism, in specific applications, may not directly correlate to presence. ...
The visual realism classification scale (VRCS) is a tool to help researchers judge, compare, and describe the visual realism of objects in virtual environments. In Human-Computer Interaction, visual realism is a much-investigated topic, as different tasks benefit from a particular level of detail. The subjective feeling of realism becomes more tangible by judging 3D objects based on the objective criteria: lighting, reflection, texture, structure, form, and internal consistency. This paper revises the original VRCS using statistical analysis and an expert focus group. The adopted changes are evaluated through a complementary user study of 34 participants, which resulted in high validity due to a significant correlation between the subjective measure and VRCS. Furthermore, the scale significantly predicts subjective realism and improves the inter-rater reliability on multiple questions. Using the focus group and user study results, this paper offers guidance on applying the VRCS in research.
... They refer to the distractive qualities of highly realistic applications, hindering learning and training effects. Others even found evidence of aesthetic preferences towards less realistic visuals [33]. It is further suggested that reduced realism might be needed for player engagement in gaming [4]. ...
... Other methods of measuring subjective realism investigate the level of presence that the participants experience. Slater et al. and Schwind et al. show that people experience higher presence in high-realism environments [35,33], which is why it has been used as a proxy indicator of realism. However, other papers [32,1] discuss that perceived realism, in specific applications, may not directly correlate to presence. ...
3D models are at the core of every virtual and augmented reality application. They appear in varying degrees of visual realism complexity, depending on the intention of use and contextual as well as technical limitations. The research concerning the effects induced by different degrees of visual realism complexity of 3D models can be used to define in which fields and applications a high visual realism is needed.This paper proposes a classification of 3D models in extended reality applications, according to their visual realism complexity. To identify the aspects of realism classification this work considers how past studies defined the virtual realism complexity of 3D models and looks into approaches of diverse disciplines.After defining the visual realism complexity scale, the paper validates the method in a user study. The study was conducted with 24 participants that viewed 16 different 3D models in virtual reality and rated them with the proposed scale.The collected data shows a significant correlation between subjective realism and the proposed scale. Next to depicting visual realism, the scale also improves the explicitness of realism ratings.The classification enables scientists to specify the level of visual realism complexity of their used 3D models. At the same time, this opens up opportunities to conduct comparable research about visual realism complexity.KeywordsHuman factorsVisual RealismExtended RealityPerformance measurementVisualization and image rendering
... An uncanny valley is also observed when using animal stimuli [38,39], but the sensitivity of the effect to facial distortions remains stronger in human faces compared to animal faces [6]. Furthermore, recent evidence shows that the effect of facial distortion on uncanniness ratings is enhanced when faces are upright (compared to inverted) and familiar (compared to novel), and that this effect is mediated by perceptual sensitivity to detect facial distortions [40]. ...
... The results complement previous research showing that changes in uncanniness ratings are more sensitive to distortions in familiar categories like human compared to animal faces [6,7], realistic compared to unrealistic faces [4,5,40], one's own face compared to a stranger's face [71], and familiar compared to unfamiliar and upright compared to inverted faces [40]. In general, the deviation from familiarity effect predicts a generality of the uncanny valley phenomenon (or uncanniness) beyond previous suggestions of human or animal specificity [2,33,39], and could extend to inanimate yet familiar categories like written text or physical places, which could be explored in future research. ...
Humanlike entities deviating from the norm of human appearance are perceived as strange or uncanny. Explanations for the eeriness of deviating humanlike entities include ideas specific to human or animal stimuli like mate selection, avoidance of threat or disease, or dehumanization; however, deviation from highly familiar categories may provide a better explanation. Here it is tested whether experts and novices in a novel (greeble) category show different patterns of abnormality, attractiveness, and uncanniness responses to distorted and averaged greebles. Greeble-trained participants assessed the abnormality, attractiveness, uncanniness of normal, averaged, and distorted greebles and their responses were compared to participants who had not previously seen greebles. The data show that distorted greebles were more uncanny than normal greebles only in the training condition, and distorted greebles were more uncanny in the training compared to the control condition. In addition, averaged greebles were not more attractive than normal greebles regardless of condition. The results suggest uncanniness is elicited by deviations from stimulus categories of expertise rather than being a purely biological human- or animal-specific response.
... alcuni parametri di inquietudine, raccapriccio o spavento (Diel et al., 2022;Ho & MacDorman, 2010, 2017Mangan, 2015), è stato dimostrato anche in animali artificiali (Löffler, Dörrenbächer, & Hassenzahl, 2020;Schwind, Leicht, Jäger, Wolf, & Henze, 2018) e animali impagliati Yamada, Kawabe, & Ihaya, 2012). Il fenomeno UV è stato anche dimostrato negli ambienti fisici distorti (esempio le case distorte in , dando vita agli spazi chiamati "liminali", i quali giocano ai limiti della plausibilità e sulle aspettative, stimolando l'interazione sensoriale, spaziale, logica e cognitiva attraverso la manipolazione di dimensioni, vuoti, ripetizioni e disposizione degli elementi (Gilbert, 2016;Diel & Lewis, 2022). ...
The design of immersive virtual environments for retail often follows a realistic approach that mimics physical stores. However, while the parameters of real space are established, those of virtual space are still in their beginnings in scientific research. The present study explores anomalous immersive virtual environments, investigating the “uncanny valley.” Through the design of 5 metaverses, materials, architecture, proportions and arrangement of elements were tested. A case study in the fashion industry evaluated the impact on user experience, highlighting the influence of dimensional anomalies on permanence and product appreciation.
... While external factors that affect resilience are social support, environment and emotion regulation (Vallahatullah, 2019). The impact of low resilience in children and adolescents due to disasters causes the risk of developing mental problems in the future due to the influence of the deep trauma experienced by children and adolescents after disasters, which causes them to become stressed and difficult to foster a sense of spirit after experiencing adversity (Schwind et al, 2018). ...
The Semeru Mount eruption disaster causes feelings of anxiety, anxiety, and grief. From the result of a preliminary study conducted by researchers at he ANNUR Foundation, Pronojiwo Village, Lumajang Regency,it wa found that some adolescents experienced low and moderate resilience . The purpose of this study is to determine the relationship between spirituality and the resilience of adolescents after the eruption of Mount Semeru. The research design used analytic with a cross sectional approach. The independent variable was spiritual. The dependent variable was adolescent resilience. The population is 66 adolescents aged 14-16 years at the Annur Sumberurip Foundation school, Pronojiwo Village, Lumajang Regency, with a sample taken is 56. The sampling technique used probability sampling with a proportional random sampling technique. Data collection techniques using a questionnaire. The statistical test used the Spearman rank test with (a = 0.05). This research has been carried out ethical clearance test by KEPK STIKes Ngudia Husada Madura team. The results of the statistical Spearman rank test obtained a value of p = 0.000 <α (0.05). Thus it be concluded that there was a relationship between spirituality and resilience of adolescents post the eruption of Mount Semeru at the ANNUR Foundation, Pronojiwo Village, Lumajang Regency. With and r value = 0.951 means that spirituality and resilience are strongly related. It is recommended that this research be used as a data source for further research related to the relationship between spirituality and resilience in adolescents after a volcanic eruption by adding other factors that can affect spirituality in adolescents. Health workers are also advised to make it a reference in providing nursing care to adolescents who experience resilience. For respondents to do self-development by increasing spirituality by attending more frequently at taklim majlis events as a means of increasing their sincerity in exploring spirituality
... Although the theoretical underpinnings of the uncanny valley remain under debate, the concept has been effectively implemented as a heuristic guiding the design and study of multiple forms of non-human entities, such as robotic companions [Walters et al. 2008], human-like virtual avatars [Shin et al. 2019], virtual animals [Schwind et al. 2018], and chatbots [Song and Shin 2024]. It is unclear whether the concept of the uncanny valley translates well to networks in which humanness is not necessarily loaded on an entity or persona but rather inferred through the interpretation of texts. ...
Every interaction has become uncanny. Discourse, the pattern of interactions between two parties, has moved into a space on the boundaries of self and other. We identify the Uncanny Discourse to bring these concepts together to further human-computer interaction research. Interactions, whether mediated by information and communication technologies or not, have always been necessarily between two spaces. Now, the diametric conflict of those two spaces has become at once obvious and unsettlingly unknown. Interaction has become real and synthetic; informing and deceiving; and clear and cryptic. Sliding between these spaces is uncanny. We raise a challenge for researchers in interaction-face the uncanny. Incorporate it in your design, in your research. And intentionally choose between strengthening the uncanny and mitigating it. Today, our technologies are not only used in the context of social interactions but have formed the basis upon which social interactions are built, replicated, and maintained. While the rapid development and widespread acceptance of networked technologies stand as an example of the adaptability of our species, the many heuristics built into social processes, developed through millennia of interactions, have yet to be understood in terms of their utility and resilience in the social contexts which are embedded in technology. In this paper, we expand on two concepts previously used as a heuristic for understanding interaction: the uncanny, applied to technologies in physical space, and discourse, applied to networks of information and readers of that information. We seek to bring these concepts together in today's networked social space and determine its utility in future design and research. To this end, the concept of uncanny discourse is presented as a means by which human-actors' perceptions of networked spaces, and the actors therein, can be understood.
... For example, in a study byOsinski et al. (2019), the inclusion of anthropomorphic features in illustrations of native animals increased the donations all species received, but when using photographs, our study saw more heterogeneity in results. In addition,Schwind et al. (2018) found that viewers reacted negatively to computergenerated animal images, as didLöffler et al. (2020) with zoomorphic robots. We suggest that illustrations or cartoons are acknowledged by their audiences as creative representations and thus do not need to be highly accurate depictions of wildlife. ...
Many threatened species suffer from a lack of conservation attention compared to others. Prioritisation of funding, research and conservation efforts seem to be driven by reasons beyond conservation need. This could be due to a ‘beauty bias’, whereby aesthetically pleasing species receive more attention.
We examined how editing an image to increase a species' aesthetic appeal may impact donation choices and public attitude towards that species. We posed two research questions; first, ‘do people make different donation choices when they see original images of a species compared to when they see images of the same species that have been edited to match aesthetic preferences?’ Using hypothetical donation experiments, we asked respondents to allocate funds to the conservation of three pictured species, one ‘aesthetically appealing’, one ‘aesthetically unappealing’, and one whose image was either edited to reflect common aesthetic preferences or left unedited. Our findings suggest that images edited to make an animal more visually appealing tend to receive higher hypothetical donation amounts than original images.
We also posed a second research question; ‘How do people of varying conservation expertise respond to original versus edited images of wildlife?’ To investigate this, we ran three focus groups with individuals unfamiliar with our test species, those familiar with two or more of our test species, and with conservation professionals, which showed mixed reactions both within and between groups. Focus group participants with less conservation expertise noted that edited images often seemed ‘cuter’ than unedited images, and were more likely to compare them to cartoon characters. Participants with more conservation expertise and species familiarity reported greater empathy towards unedited images, and noted that the edited images prompted an ‘uncanny valley’ response, highlighting the need for further scrutiny in how photo editing might be used in conservation messaging.
Our findings support the beauty bias hypothesis and highlight that decisions on conservation support should acknowledge that less aesthetically pleasing species are disadvantaged in public attention and funding. In addition, the findings highlight the role of conservation expertise in impacting viewer reactions, as well as the ethical implications of editing images of wildlife.
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... Recently, an interesting finding by Seymour et al. [45] indicated that the Uncanny Valley can be crossed and the ability to cross it depends on who controls the avatar (i.e., a human or a virtual agent). In addition, some researchers studied the influencing factors on the uncanny valley effect, such as the environmental background of the virtual avatars [25,42], display types [12,40], and the matching degree of voices and body gestures [7,52]. In their study, Kim et al. [22] found evidence for the existence of two uncanny valleys, one emerged for high human-like robots and the other emerged for moderated low human-like robots. ...
The uncanny valley effect has sparked interest in fields such as humanoid robotics and hyper-realistic virtual animation. Nonetheless, proof of its existence in artificial intelligence (AI) news anchors remains limited. This study examined the existence and effect of the uncanny valley in AI news anchors. Particularly, it delved into human perception and behavior during interactions with AI news anchors. Results showed that AI news anchors failed to establish emotional bonds with audiences, and thus fell within the uncanny valley. Audiences were sensitive to minor defects and oddities in the AI news anchors, and felt eerie while watching them. Findings of this study can be used to formulate guidelines for the design of the appearance and behavior of not only AI news anchors but all humanoid AI characters.
... Uncanniness effects have been observed in animal stimuli, for example when distorting or morphing animal faces (Diel & MacDorman, 2021;Yamada, Kawabe, & Ihaya, 2013) or for instances of robotic or computer-generated animals (Löffler, Dörrenbächer, & Hassenzahl, 2020, pp. 261-270;Schwind, Leicht, Jäger, Wolf, & Henze, 2018). Uncanniness effects have also been observed in inanimate objects, like distortions in physical places (Diel & Lewis, 2022a;Diel & MacDorman, 2021). ...
... On one hand, this phenomenon is related to human-like characters in games and animations, in facial caricatures, masks, avatars in virtual reality, facial caricatures, characters in 3D computer animations, lifelike dolls, and any type of human-like objects (Jiang et al., 2022;Mori, 1970;Seyama & Nagayama, 2007;Tinwell, 2014;MacDorman, 2006). On the other hand, recent studies have shown that the uncanny valley phenomenon could be triggered by virtual animals as well (Diel & MacDorman, 2021;Schwind, Leicht, Jäger, Wolf, & Henze, 2018;Sierra Rativa, Postma, & van Zaanen, 2022). ...
... Schwind et al. noted that if the virtual cat model was more natural, of higher quality, and had a less intimidating appearance, users could feel more comfortable with the virtual cat model and interact better with it (20). Considering this aspect, this study used the "Kitten (short)" asset from the Unity Asset Store. ...
Introduction
Interacting with animals has been demonstrated to possess the healing benefits to humans. However, there are limitations in physical interaction due to COVID-19 and safety issues. Therefore, as an alternative, we created mixed-reality (MR)-based human-animal interaction (HAI) content and experimentally verified its effect on mental stress reduction.
Methods
We created three types of interactive content: observing the movement of a non-reactive virtual cat, interacting with a virtual cat whose responses can be seen, and interacting with a virtual cat whose responses can be both seen and heard. The experiment was performed by 30 healthy young women, and a mental arithmetic task was used to induce mild mental stress before experiencing each content. During the experiment, the subject's electrocardiogram was continuously recorded, and the psychological state was evaluated through a questionnaire.
Results
The results showed that MR-based virtual cat content significantly reduces mental stress and induces positive emotions after stressful situations. In particular, when the virtual cat provided audiovisual feedback, the activation amount of the parasympathetic nervous system and the increase of positive emotions were the greatest.
Discussion
Based on this encouraging research result, this method should be further investigated to see if it can replace real HAI for human mental health management.
... Researchers found that designs affect emotions [116] there remains a remarkable influence of the field of expertise of the probands, which leads to our new speculative hypothesis that the "technophilic attitude" of a significant part of the problems covered and superseded their primary affinity towards their artificial partner in conversation [117]. Spreading VR and AR-based solutions does not seem like a panaceait was shown that virtual characters were often regarded as more uncanny (less familiar and human-like) than humans and that increasing levels of asynchrony increased perception of uncanniness was always noticeable [118], similar to that of video games [119]. ...
Purpose
We present a systematic literature review of dialogue agents for Artificial Intelligence (AI) and agent-based conversational systems dealing with cognitive disability of aged and impaired people including dementia and Parkinson’s disease. We analyze current applications, gaps, and challenges in the existing research body, and provide guidelines and recommendations for their future development and use.
Materials and methods
We perform this study by applying Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) criteria. We performed a systematic search using relevant databases (ACM Digital Library, Google Scholar, IEEE Xplore, PubMed, and Scopus).
Results
This study identified 468 articles on the use of conversational agents in healthcare. We finally selected 124 articles based on their objectives and content as directly related to our main topic.
Conclusion
We identified the main challenges in the field and analyzed the typical examples of the application of conversational agents in the healthcare domain, the desired characteristics of conversational agents, and chatbot support for aged people and people with cognitive disabilities. Our results contribute to a discussion on conversational health agents and emphasize current knowledge gaps and challenges for future research.
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IMPLICATIONS FOR REHABILITATION
• A systematic literature review of dialogue agents for artificial intelligence and agent-based conversational systems dealing with cognitive disability of aged and impaired people.
• Main challenges and desired characteristics of the conversational agents, and chatbot support for aged people and people with cognitive disability.
• Current knowledge gaps and challenges for remote healthcare and rehabilitation.
• Guidelines and recommendations for future development and use of conversational systems.
... A major drawback of the original hypothesis is it does not provide the exact definition or standards of human-likeness, affinity, eeriness, and means of quantifying these [9,25] , which causes methodological circularity [25] . In recent years, researchers have expanded their investigations to examine the possibility of observing the same uncanny valley in zoomorphic robots [26] or virtual animals [27] . Like humanoid robots, zoomorphic robots that combine realistic and nonrealistic features are less preferred [26] . ...
The uncanny valley hypothesis states that users might experience eerie when interacting with almost but not fully human-like artificial characters. The advancements in artificial intelligence, robotics, and computer graphics have led to life-like virtual humans and humanoid robots. It is necessary to revisit the hypothesis to check if they positively or negatively affect the current population, who are much more accustomed to the latest technologies. In this paper, we study and present a unique evaluation of the uncanny valley hypothesis by allowing participants to interact live with four different humanoid robots (of varying levels of humanlikeness). To evaluate the affinity of each robot, each participant needs to fill a survey questionnaire. Apart from this, we also use deep learning methods to quantify the participants’ emotional states using multi-modalcues, including visual, audio, and text, by recording the participant-robot interaction. The multi-modal analysis and surveys provide interesting results and insights into the uncanny valley hypothesis.
... However, it is not clear whether these humans-specific processing cause uncanniness or merely correlate with uncanniness caused by, for example, deviation from familiar categories. As the uncanny valley has been found in perceiving animals (e.g., Schwind et al., 2018) and built environments (Diel & Lewis, in review;Diel & MacDorman, 2021), uncanny valley may occur for nonhuman categories, which could not be easily explained by explanations focussing on human-specific processing. Observed associations between mind or animacy perception and an uncanny valley could be merely correlational, and instead have the same cause: Subtle deviations or anomalies in facial appearance could interfere with mind or animacy attribution, and in addition appear uncanny. ...
Deviating from human norms in human-looking artificial entities can elicit uncanny sensations, described as the uncanny valley. This study investigates in three tasks whether configural deviation in written text also increases uncanniness. It further evaluates whether the uncanniness of text is better explained by perceptual disfluency and especially deviations from specialized categories, or conceptual disfluency caused by ambiguity. In the first task, lower sentence readability predicted uncanniness, but deviating sentences were more uncanny than typical sentences despite being just as readable. Furthermore, familiarity with a language increased the effect of configural deviation on uncanniness but not the effect of non-configural deviation (blur). In the second and third tasks, semantically ambiguous words and sentences were not uncannier than typical sentences, but deviating, non-ambiguous sentences were. Deviations from categories with specialized processing mechanisms thus better fit the observed results as an explanation of the uncanny valley than ambiguity-based explanations.
... The negative emotional experience has been described as eeriness, creepiness, or uncanniness (Diel et al., 2022;Ho & MacDorman, 2010, 2017Mangan, 2015). The effect is not specific to human entities: artificial animals (Löffler, Dörrenbächer, & Hassenzahl, 2020;Schwind, Leicht, Jäger, Wolf, & Henze, 2018) and manipulations of realistic animals (Diel & MacDorman, 2021;Yamada, Kawabe, & Ihaya, 2012) elicit observable uncanny valleys. Finally, distorted houses are rated as more uncanny than normal houses (Diel & MacDorman, 2021), indicating that the uncanny valley transcends animate categories and is applicable to built physical environments. ...
Certain built environments can decrease aesthetic appeal. For humans and objects, deviation from typical appearances leads to nonlinear appraisal characterised as the uncanny valley. The first time, it was explored whether an uncanny valley can be found for built environments. In Experiment 1, a cubic N-shaped function of uncanniness plotted against realism of built environments was found, indicating an uncanny valley. Quantitative and qualitative data indicate an association between uncanniness and structural anomalies. Experiment 2 explored distortions leading to uncanniness of indoor places. In Experiment 3, human presence decreased uncanniness of distorted indoor public places but increased uncanniness of private rooms. Taken together, the evidence indicates that deviations from familiar configural patterns drive uncanniness of built physical places. Thus, strong deviations from a built environment's predictable pattern decreases its aesthetic appeal.
... For thorough theory testing on the exact design and psychological mechanisms responsible for the uncanny valley effect, in future work, it may be more suitable to use a controlled set of image stimuli, such as morphed (Lee et al., 1996;Wolberg, 1998) or computer-generated images (Burleigh et al., 2013;Burleigh & Schoenherr, 2015;Seyama & Nagayama, 2007) or even inanimate objects like cameras and greebles Diel & MacDorman, 2021;Mac-Dorman & Chattopadhyay, 2016) and non-human animals like cats (Schwind et al., 2018) and dogs (de Visser et al., 2022). ...
The uncanny valley hypothesis describes how increased human-likeness of artificial entities, ironically, could elicit a surge of negative reactions from people. Much research has studied the uncanny valley hypothesis, but little research has sought to examine people's reactions to a broad range of human-likeness manifested in real-world robots. We focused on examining people's emotional responses to real-world, as opposed to hypothetical, robots because these robots impact real-life human–robot interactions. We measured both positive and negative emotional responses to a large collection of full-body images of robots (N = 251) with various human-like features. We found evidence for the existence of not one, but two uncanny valleys. Mori's uncanny valley emerged for high human-like robots and a second uncanny valley emerged for moderately low human-like robots. We attributed these valleys to unique combinations of perceptual mismatches between human-like features, specified by a match between surface and facial feature dimensions accompanied by a mismatch with the body-manipulator dimension. We also found that patterns of the uncanny valleys differed between positive (shinwakan) and negative (bukimi) emotional responses. Lastly, the word uncanny appeared to be an unreliable measure of the uncanny valley. Implications for robot design and the uncanny valley research are discussed.
... Therefore further investigation might be relevant to identify the cause. One explanation for our results could be the widely reported uncanny valley [30] effect, which has been correlated with the U-shape in a numbers of cases including both anthropomorphism as well as zoomorphism [11,25,29,38]. ...
We investigate the impact of anthropomorphism on embodied AI through a study of personal assistants (PA). The effects of physical embodiment remain underexplored while the consumer market for PAs shows an increase in the diversity of physical appearances of these products. We designed three fictional personal assistants with varying levels of embodied anthropomorphism. We validated that our prototypes differed significantly in levels of anthropomorphism (N=26). We developed a set of identical videos for each device, demonstrating realistic end-user interaction across six scenarios. Using a between-subject video survey study (N=150), we evaluate the impact of different levels of embodied anthropomorphism on the perception of personal assistants. Our results show that while anthropomorphism did not significantly affect the perception of Overall Goodness, it affected perceptions of Perceived Intelligence, Likeability, and the device’s Pragmatic Qualities. Finally, we discuss the implications of the identified relationships between anthropomorphism and user confidence in embodied AI systems.
... Second, a UV effect has been observed with animal stimuli (e.g. Löffler, Dörrenbacher, & Hassenzahl, 2020;Mitchell, Szerszen, Lu, Schermerhorn, Scheutz, & MacDorman, 2011;Schwind, Leicht, Jäger, Wolf, & Henze, 2018b;Yamada et al., 2013). Third, distortions of the structure of human faces elicits stronger uncanniness ratings than comparable distortions of the structure of cat faces or houses (Diel & MacDorman, 2021). ...
The uncanny valley predicts aversive reactions toward near-humanlike entities. Greater uncanniness is elicited by distortions in realistic than unrealistic faces, possibly due to familiarity. Experiment 1 investigated how familiarity and inversion affect uncanniness of facial distortions and the ability to detect differences between the distorted variants of the same face (distortion sensitivity). Familiar or unfamiliar celebrity faces were incrementally distorted and presented either upright or inverted. Uncanniness ratings increased across the distortion levels, and were stronger for familiar and upright faces. Distortion sensitivity increased with increasing distortion difference levels, again stronger for familiar and upright faces. Experiment 2 investigated how face realism, familiarity, and face orientation interacted for the increase of uncanniness across distortions. Realism increased the increase of uncanniness across the distortion levels, further enhanced by upright orientation and familiarity. The findings show that familiarity, upright orientation, and high face realism increase the sensitivity of uncanniness, likely by increasing distortion sensitivity. Finally, a moderated linear function of face realism and deviation level could explain the uncanniness of stimuli better than a quadratic function. A re-interpretation of the uncanny valley as sensitivity toward deviations from familiarized patterns is discussed.
... Schwind et al. stated that people feel more comfortable and interact better with the virtual cat model if the quality of the model is higher and if it looks more natural and less intimidating [26]. Therefore, a rigged kitten (short) (https://assetstore.unity.com/packages/ ...
Human–animal interaction (HAI) has been observed to effectively reduce stress and induce positive emotions owing to the process of directly petting and interacting with animals. Interaction with virtual animals has recently emerged as an alternative due to the limitations in general physical interactions, both due to the COVID-19 pandemic and, more generally, due to the difficulties involved in providing adequate care for animals. This study proposes mixed reality (MR)-based human–animal interaction content along with presenting the experimental verification of its effect on the reduction of mental stress. A mental arithmetic task was employed to induce acute mental stress, which was followed by either MR content, in which a participant interacted with virtual animals via gestures and voice commands, or a slide show of animal images. During the experiment, an electrocardiogram (ECG) was continuously recorded with a patch-type, wireless ECG sensor on the chest of the subject, and their psychological state was evaluated with the help of questionnaires after each task. The findings of the study demonstrate that the MR-based interaction with virtual animals significantly reduces mental stress and induces positive emotions. We expect that this study could provide a basis for the widespread use of MR-based content in the field of mental health.
... Entities that fall into this slope are perceived as more eerie compared to less human like entities (see Fig. 2) [13]. The original graph as proposed by Mori, from the 2012 translation [13] Since the introduction of the uncanny valley in the 1970s to the field of robotics, it has been widely adopted to other fields in numerous studies: for actually built robots [14], 2D representation of persons in film [15,16] as well as in computer games [17,18], and even for cats [19]. All those studies, except for the actually built robots, have in common that they were carried out using a 2D output device such as a monitor or a projector, but more immersive technologies such as stereoscopic displays or HMDs have not been given much attention so far. ...
The visual representation of human-like entities in virtual worlds is becoming a very important aspect as virtual reality becomes more and more “social”. The visual representation of a character’s resemblance to a real person and the emotional response to it, as well as the expectations raised, have been a topic of discussion for several decades and have been debated by scientists from different disciplines. But as with any new technology, the findings may need to be reevaluated and adapted to new modalities. In this context, we make two contributions which may have implications for how avatars should be represented in social virtual reality applications. First, we determine how default and customized characters of current social virtual reality platforms appear in terms of human likeness, eeriness, and likability, and whether there is a clear resemblance to a given person. It can be concluded that the investigated platforms vary strongly in their representation of avatars. Common to all is that a clear resemblance does not exist. Second, we show that the uncanny valley effect is also present in head-mounted displays, but—compared to 2D monitors—even more pronounced.
... Teori ini menerangkan bahawa robot yang direka bentuk terlalu realistik dan menyerupai manusia sebenar boleh menyebabkan perasaan tidak selesa kepada orang yang melihatnya (Mathur & Reichling, 2016). Walaupun teori ini pada mulanya lebih terarah kepada tahap realistik robot, namun begitu fenomena yang sama juga turut berlaku terhadap karakter animasi yang realistik (Mathur & Reichling, 2016;Schwind, Leicht, Jäger, Wolf, & Henze, 2018). Fenomenon Uncanny Valley menyatakan bahawa karakter animasi yang terlalu realistik memberikan kesan yang negatif terhadap tahap keselesaan dan emosi pengguna yang menonton karakter tersebut (Lay, Brace, Pike, & Pollick, 2016). ...
The talking-head animation is an instructional approach that can be utilized to represent teachers or pedagogical agents in the digital learning medium. However, talking-head animation can potentially become a source of distraction in learning due to insufficient design of the talking-head characters. Therefore, this article will discuss and suggest a conceptual framework as a guidance for studies related to such problems. This conceptual framework is constructed based on the theories, principles and relevant literature reviews. This article also outlines future research suggestions to further strengthen the conceptual framework that has been developed.
... Anthropomorphic features have been the subject of many classic studies in robotic appearance and uncanny valley theory, recently it has begun to analyze with animal appearance. Schwind et al., (2018) determined that is the realism of the virtual animal-like characters can generate negative reactions, in the same way, as the human-like characters in the uncanny valley theory. For Schneider, Wang, & Yang (2007) a safer strategy for not to fall into the uncanny valley is design virtual animals with nonanthropomorphized appearance but that it can emote and communicate as a human than as a normal animal. ...
The use of virtual robot animals (VRAs) can have a potential impact on applications with affective and aesthetic interfaces. In particular, VRAs can be used in instructional videos in order to develop new ways to engage young learners and to foster personalization of educational instruction. In this paper, we explore the perception of the virtual instructor appearance and its effect on knowledge recall outcomes for young learners. We conducted an experiment with three different virtual instructor appearances: (1) robot animal, (2) animal, and (3) human. The content of the video instruction had two themes: (A) A topic related to robotics (e.g., introductory concepts about robotics), and (B) a topic unrelated to robotics (e.g., Dutch culture). A total of 131 students participated in this study. They originated from two secondary public schools in Bogota, Colombia. Our results showed that the robot animal as a virtual instructor was perceived as the least familiar, common, attractive, interesting, and natural compared with the virtual instructors with the animal and human appearance. Moreover, learners in the condition with the virtual robot animal scored significantly lower on knowledge recall for both topics. A follow-up study can focus on ways to increase positive reactions toward robotic animals as virtual instructors. Video about this research: https://youtu.be/PY1CN0DoKF4.
The potential to create autonomous teammates that work alongside humans has increased with continued advancements in AI and autonomous technology. Research in human–AI teams and human–autonomy teams (HATs) has seen an influx of new and diverse researchers from human factors, computing, and teamwork, yielding one of the most interdisciplinary domains in modern research. However, the HAT domain’s interdisciplinary nature can make the design of research, especially experiments, more complex, and new researchers may not fully grasp the numerous decisions required to perform high-impact HAT research. To aid researchers in designing high-impact experiments, this article itemizes four initial decision points needed to form a HAT experiment: deciding on a research question, deciding on a team composition, deciding on a research environment, and deciding on data collection. For each decision point, this article discusses these decisions in practice, providing related works to guide researchers toward different options available to them. These decision points are then synthesized through actionable recommendations to guide future researchers. The contribution of this article will increase the impact and knowledge of HAT experiments.
The rise of virtual influencers has significantly transformed the dynamics of influencer-follower relationships. Integrating uncanny valley and parasocial relationship theories, in this study we construct and validate a model to delineate how the anthropomorphism of virtual influencers—characterized by humanness, attractiveness, and eeriness—affects the strength of parasocial relationships. Using survey data from 826 Instagram users, we reveal that this process is mediated by trustworthiness and wishful identification, with autonomy serving as a moderator that interacts with these anthropomorphism characteristics. We also examine variations in relationship development between existing followers and prospective followers, revealing that these two groups utilize distinct criteria to establish parasocial relationships with virtual influencers. Furthermore, we contribute to the ongoing debate on the uncanny valley phenomenon, showing that the relationship between virtual influencers’ anthropomorphism and perceived trustworthiness aligns more closely with a linear model than a curvilinear one. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed.
Digital games allow us to adopt the avatar's perspective and experience the (virtual) world from another point of view. The positive effects of such role swaps are well-documented in contexts such as combating racial or ethnic biases. Our work expands this research direction by considering animal avatars: We hypothesize that playing as an animal can improve our attitude towards wildlife and nature. In particular, this manuscript contributes a first systematic study on the effects of animal avatars on players' implicit attitudes towards animals. Our study (N = 78) employs two commercial games featuring different animal avatars, Endling - Extinction is Forever and Bee Simulator, and compares the results of implicit association tests administered before and after gameplay. Our findings confirm significant positive effects of the games on players' implicit associations with foxes and bees. Together with several interesting insights regarding player-avatar relationships and avatar identification, our work paves the groundwork for games contributing positively to societal change.
Pazarlama amaçlarını gerçekleştirmek isteyen markaların, günümüzde yapay zeka ve bilgisayar destekli görüntü oluşturma (Computer Generated Imagery – CGI) teknolojileri aracılığı tasarlanan yapay zeka etkileyicileri (YPE) ile iş birliği içerisine girdikleri görülmektedir. Farklı alanlarda hizmet veren, insana benzerlikleri yüksek olan diğer robotlar gibi sosyal medya platformlarında gerçek bir insanmış gibi davranan YPE’ler de kullanıcılar tarafından itici, korkunç veya tehlikeli olarak algılanabilmektedir. Bu doğrultuda çalışma kapsamında; kendisini Türkiye’nin ilk dijital insanı olarak tanımlayan Alara X kullanıcı isimli YPE’nin, Instagram profilindeki gönderileri ve takipçilerinin gönderilerine yaptıkları yorumlar Mori (1970) tarafından geliştirilen Tekinsiz Vadi teorisi kapsamında içerik analizi yöntemi ile incelenmiştir. Araştırma sonucunda Alara X’in takipçileri tarafından sevilen, arkadaşlık kurulmak istenen dijital bir karakter olarak görüldüğü sonucuna ulaşılmasının yanı sıra çeşitli markalar ile iş birlikleri yapan bir sosyal aktör olduğu saptanmıştır. Bu doğrultuda çalışmada antropomorfizm seviyeleri yüksek olan cansız nesnelerden biri olarak Alara X’in Tekinsiz Vadi teorisinin sınırlarını aşarak bireyler tarafından kabul gördüğü sonucuna ulaşılmıştır.
Motivation and high effort in exergames are still open to optimization. In reality, coaches can stimulate athletes' engagement by infecting them with their emotions. However, whether these emotion-influencing effects also occur with virtual coaches remains unclear. In the present study, we measured the emotional state, motivation, and performance (punch speed) of 47 participants playing a VR exergame with an emotional (happy/angry) or neutral virtual coach. Results show that the happy and angry coach significantly affected the players' emotions. Furthermore, interacting with the emotional coaches leads to higher motivation, whereas the angry coach causes a reduction of feeling related. Also, we found a significant positive correlation between the increase in anger and punch speed. Our results show that adding an emotional component to virtual coaches into exergames is promising for increasing motivation and performance. This study highlights the positive effects of emotional virtual characters for improving VR exergames and, therefore, players' health.
Ob Hund oder Amöbe, Algorithmus oder künstliches Haustier, ob virtuell oder materialisiert, ob wahrnehmbar oder im Hintergrund – der Mensch ist nicht allein. Er teilt die Welt mit Entitäten und Wesenheiten auf eine Weise, die in ihrer Vielfältigkeit kaum abzusehen ist. Nur eines ist dabei schon jetzt klar: Die Modalitäten des Zusammenlebens in multispecies societies fügen sich nicht mehr den gewohnten Vorstellungen von Subjekt und Objekt, von innen und außen, von Herr- und Knechtschaft, von Rationalität und Gefühl. Vielmehr bricht sich die Erkenntnis Bahn, dass der Mensch auf andere Arten angewiesen ist. Und er tut gut daran, neue Formen der Verwandtschaftsverhältnisse einzugehen, ohne bloß den Träumen von Enhancement zu verfallen. Allein durch Gesten der Reduktion, wie Stefan Rieger zeigt, wird eine umfassendere Teilhabe ermöglicht. Und nur in Form veränderter Kooperationen und Kollaborationen, in Anerkennung anderer Handlungsmächte und einer Ethik, die nicht ausschließlich den Menschen im Blick hat, ist eine angemessene Reaktion auf die neue Welt von Menschen und Nicht-Menschen zu finden.
Following the robots, whether virtual characters (VC) will cause the uncanny valley (UV) effect has become a new topic of UV studies, and also a topic that cannot be avoided by VC design and human-VC interaction. Based on the Web of Science core collection (WoSCC), this paper reviews literature on the topics of both the VC and UV (2007-2022) by summarizing the trends and methods research. It groups studies into three categories: verifying the UV and its influencing factors; suggestions for avoiding the UV; possibilities for crossing the UV. We suggest that, under current technological conditions, finding a proper balance between abstraction and high realism to avoid the risk of the UV is a sound choice for VC design, while also providing suggestions for future research.
For over 100 years, non-human primates (primates) have been a part of the now hundred-billion-dollar global film industry in a variety of capacities. Their use in the film industry is of concern due to the negative welfare effects on individuals, the potential for increased pet trade, and the conservation impacts of public perception. While the effects on human perception of using live primates in film have been studied, little research has been performed on their appearance in animation and none in computer-generated imagery (CGI). We aimed to investigate how the portrayal of primates varied between depiction medium types and how this related to the films’ performance with critics and in the box office. We observed 151 primates in 101 different English-speaking films that debuted between 2000 and 2019. For each appearance we recorded aspects of primate portrayals based on accuracy, anthropomorphism, environment, and agency displayed, along with the depiction medium. We used structural equation models to depict the highest likelihood of the portrayal aspects on the medium’s relationship to the films gross profit worldwide and film critic consensus scores. We found that over the 20-year time frame, use of live primates has decreased, CGI has increased, and animations have remained relatively steady. While animation had no significant relationship to gross profit or critic consensus, both were significantly lower for films that used live primates and were significantly higher for films that used CGI primates. Due to the steady increase in the use of the CGI medium and its positive relationship with gross profit and critic consensus, it could have great effects on people’s perceptions of primates and implications for conservation efforts.
Virtual Influencers (VIs) are computer-generated characters, many of which are often visually indistinguishable from humans and interact with the world in the first-person perspective as social media influencers. They are gaining popularity by creating content in various areas, including fashion, music, art, sports, games, environmental sustainability, and mental health. Marketing firms and brands increasingly use them to capitalise on their millions of followers. Yet, little is known about what prompts people to engage with these digital beings. In this paper, we present our interview study with online users who followed different VIs on Instagram beyond the fashion application domain. Our findings show that the followers are attracted to VIs due to a unique mixture of visual appeal, sense of mystery, and creative storytelling that sets VI content apart from that of real human influencers. Specifically, VI content enables digital artists and content creators by removing the constraints of bodies and physical features. The followers not only perceived VIs' rising popularity in commercial industries, but also are supportive of VI involvement in non-commercial causes and campaigns. However, followers are reluctant to attribute trustworthiness to VIs in general though they display trust in limited domains, e.g., technology, music, games, and art. This research highlights VI's potential as innovative digital content, carrying influence and employing more varied creators, an appeal that could be harnessed by diverse industries and also by public interest organisations.
Digitale Technik ist längst fester Bestandteil der Massentierhaltung und des modernen Herdenmanagements. Auf Basis der elektronischen Tierkennzeichnung operiert das »Smart Farming« gleichermaßen mit Tierdaten und Datentieren. Neben der intendierten Identifikation und Verfolgbarkeit geraten hierbei vermehrt Formen der Überwachung und Kontrolle in den Blick - und schließlich auch Verhaltensänderungen bei den Tieren selbst. Aus der Verbindung von Lebewesen und technischem Artefakt resultieren zunehmend Fragen nach dem Status des Tieres in unserer Kultur. Unter dem Aspekt der »anonymen Individualisierung« analysiert Ina Bolinski aus medienwissenschaftlicher Perspektive die aktuellen Aushandlungen um den veränderten Akteurstatus von Tier, Technik und Mensch.
The 2019 film adaptation of the musical, Cats, was a box-office flop, unpopular with critics and audiences, and failing to recoup its production cost. The two major criticisms levelled at the film – its perceived lack of plot and unsuccessful animation – contributed to Cats’ inability to make an impact. While plot problems also beset the musical, the second criticism levelled at the film – the “creepy” CGI – points to the uncanny valley effect as an explanation for the film’s failure. Specifically, category ambiguity hinders the audience’s ability to empathise with the characters and triggers feelings of discomfort and disgust.
For an immersive Virtual Reality (IVR) application to be more effective, the user needs to feel "present" in it. It is recurrent, though, that the user has an impaired sense of presence. In many cases, this variation can be explained by the Uncanny Valley (UV) theory. In this context, this paper presents a systematic literature review that summarizes the results of studies about the occurrence of UV caused by the user's virtual hands in IVR applications. Users have the expectation of trying to predict how appearances, motions, textures, and interactions would look like in real life. Thus, in situations in which, during the application, an element imperfectly resembles the real, the UV occurs, generating eeriness in the user and reducing their sense of presence and immersion. A user-centered design process must deal with user frustration and, therefore, identify and mitigate possible UV threats.
This book critically examines how Walt Disney Animation Studios has depicted – and sometimes failed to depict – different forms of harming and objectifying non-human animals in their films. Each chapter addresses a different form of animal harm and objectification through the theories of speciesism, romanticism, and the ‘collapse of compassion’ effect, from farming, hunting and fishing, to clothing, work, and entertainment. Stanton lucidly presents the dichotomy between depictions of higher order, anthropomorphised and neotonised animal characters and that of lower-order species, showing furthermore how these depictions are closely linked to changing social attitudes about acceptable forms of animal harm.
An engaging and novel contribution to the field of Critical Animal Studies, this book explores the use of animals not only in Disney’s best known animated films such as 101 Dalmatians, but also lesser known features including Home on the Range and Fun and Fancy Free. A quantitative appendix supplying data on how often each animal species appears and the amount of times animal harm or objectification is depicted in over fifty films provides an invaluable resource and addition to scholars working in both Disney and animal studies.
Rendering the user's body in virtual reality increases immersion and presence the illusion of "being there". Recent technology enables determining the pose and position of the hands to render them accordingly while interacting within the virtual environment. Virtual reality applications often use realistic male or female hands, mimic robotic hands, or cartoon hands. However, it is unclear how users perceive different hand styles. We conducted a study with 14 male and 14 female participants in virtual reality to investigate the effect of gender on the perception of six different hands. Quantitative and qualitative results show that women perceive lower levels of presence while using male avatar hands and male perceive lower levels of presence using non-human avatar hands. While women dislike male hands, men accept and feel presence with avatar hands of both genders. Our results highlight the importance of considering the users' diversity when designing virtual reality experiences.
The uncanny valley hypothesis predicts that an entity appearing almost human risks eliciting cold, eerie feelings in viewers. Categorization-based stranger avoidance theory identifies the cause of this feeling as categorizing the entity into a novel category. This explanation is doubtful because stranger is not a novel category in adults; infants do not avoid strangers while the category stranger remains novel; infants old enough to fear strangers prefer photographs of strangers to those more closely resembling a familiar person; and the uncanny valley's characteristic eeriness is seldom felt when meeting strangers. We repeated our original experiment with a more realistic 3D computer model and found no support for categorization-based stranger avoidance theory. By contrast, realism inconsistency theory explains cold, eerie feelings elicited by transitions between instances of two different, mutually exclusive categories, given that at least one category is anthropomorphic: Cold, eerie feelings are caused by prediction error from perceiving some features as features of the first category and other features as features of the second category. In principle, realism inconsistency theory can explain not only negative evaluations of transitions between real and computer modeled humans but also between different vertebrate species.
The uncanny valley (UV) hypothesis, which predicts that almost but not fully humanlike artificial characters elicit negative evaluations, has become increasingly influential. At the same time, the hypothesis has become associated with many computer-animated films that have aimed at high realism. In the present investigation, we tested whether semirealistic animated film characters do in fact elicit negative evaluations. Fifty-four participants were asked to evaluate five matched film excerpts from each of cartoonish, semirealistic, and human-acted films. Mixed model analyses were conducted to reduce the effects of participant and stimulus related confounds. Explicit selections made after the experiment confirmed that participants associated semirealistic film characters correctly with the UV. Semirealistic animated characters also received higher eeriness ratings than the other film characters. In particular, two semirealistic films ‘Beowulf’ and ‘The Polar Express’ were selected the most often explicitly, and ‘Beowulf’ also received higher eeriness ratings than any other film. Somewhat unexpectedly, cartoonish characters received the highest strangeness ratings and (after confound correction) the lowest likability ratings. Taken together, the present findings demonstrate that semirealistic animated film characters are more eerie than cartoonish characters or real actors, and hence provide evidence for the existence of the UV in animated film characters.
Video game developers continuously increase the degree of details and realism in games to create more human-like characters. But increasing the human-likeness becomes a problem in regard to the Uncanny Valley phenomenon that predicts negative feelings of people towards artificial entities. We developed an avatar creation system to examine preferences towards parametrized faces and explore in regard to the Uncanny Valley phenomenon how people design faces that they like or reject. Based on the 3D model of the Caucasian average face, 420 participants generate 1341 faces of positively and negatively associated concepts of both gender. The results show that some characteristics associated with the Uncanny Valley are used to create villains or repulsive faces. Heroic faces get attractive features but are rarely and little stylized. A voluntarily designed face is very similar to the heroine. This indicates that there is a tendency of users to design feminine and attractive but still credible faces.
Android robots are entering human social life. However, human-robot interactions may be complicated by a hypothetical Uncanny Valley (UV) in which imperfect human-likeness provokes dislike. Previous investigations using unnaturally blended images reported inconsistent UV effects. We demonstrate an UV in subjects' explicit ratings of likability for a large, objectively chosen sample of 80 real-world robot faces and a complementary controlled set of edited faces. An "investment game" showed that the UV penetrated even more deeply to influence subjects' implicit decisions concerning robots' social trustworthiness, and that these fundamental social decisions depend on subtle cues of facial expression that are also used to judge humans. Preliminary evidence suggests category confusion may occur in the UV but does not mediate the likability effect. These findings suggest that while classic elements of human social psychology govern human-robot social interaction, robust UV effects pose a formidable android-specific problem.
Human replicas may elicit unintended cold, eerie feelings in viewers, an effect known as the uncanny valley. Masahiro Mori, who proposed the effect in 1970, attributed it to inconsistencies in the replica's realism with some of its features perceived as human and others as nonhuman. This study aims to determine whether reducing realism consistency in visual features increases the uncanny valley effect. In three rounds of experiments, 548 participants categorized and rated humans, animals, and objects that varied from computer animated to real. Two sets of features were manipulated to reduce realism consistency. (For humans, the sets were eyes–eyelashes–mouth and skin–nose–eyebrows.) Reducing realism consistency caused humans and animals, but not objects, to appear eerier and colder. However, the predictions of a competing theory, proposed by Ernst Jentsch in 1906, were not supported: The most ambiguous representations—those eliciting the greatest category uncertainty—were neither the eeriest nor the coldest.
It can be creepy to notice that something human-looking is not real. But can sensitivity to this phenomenon, known as the uncanny valley, be predicted from superficially unrelated traits? Based on results from at least 489 participants, this study examines the relation between nine theoretically motivated trait indices and uncanny valley sensitivity, operationalized as increased eerie ratings and decreased warmth ratings for androids presented in videos. Animal Reminder Sensitivity, Neuroticism, its Anxiety facet, and Religious Fundamentalism significantly predicted uncanny valley sensitivity. In addition, Concern over Mistakes and Personal Distress significantly predicted android eerie ratings but not warmth. The structural equation model indicated that Religious Fundamentalism operates indirectly, through robot-related attitudes, to heighten uncanny valley sensitivity, while Animal Reminder Sensitivity increases eerie ratings directly. These results suggest that the uncanny valley phenomenon may operate through both sociocultural constructions and biological adaptations for threat avoidance, such as the fear and disgust systems. Trait indices that predict uncanny valley sensitivity warrant investigation by experimental methods to explicate the processes underlying the uncanny valley phenomenon.
Exaggeration of facial expressions is used in animation and robotics to intensify emotions. However, modifying a human-like face can lead to an unsettling outcome. This phenomenon is known as uncanny valley. The goal of this study was to identify the realism level and magnitude of facial expression that produce the maximum amount of emotional intensity and the minimum amount of perceived strangeness. We studied the perceived intensity of emotion and perceived strangeness of faces with varying levels of realism (from schematic to photorealistic) and magnitude of facial expressions (from neutral to extremely exaggerated). We found that less realistic faces required more exaggeration to reach the emotional intensity of a real human face. While there is a range of emotional intensity that can be expressed by real human faces (from neutral to full intensity), we found that the same range of emotional intensity could be expressed by artificial faces when exaggeration was used. However, attempts to express emotional intensities outside this range using exaggeration led to strange-looking faces at all levels of realism.
Int. J. Mechanisms and Robotic Systems, Vol. 2, No. 2, 2015 97
Copyright © 2015 Inderscience Enterprises Ltd.
The effect of onset asynchrony in audio-visual
speech and the Uncanny Valley in virtual characters
Angela Tinwell*
Research and Graduate School,
The University of Bolton,
Deane Road, Bolton, BL3 5AB, UK
Email: A.Tinwell@bolton.ac.uk
*Corresponding author
Mark Grimshaw
Aalborg University,
Institute for Communication,
Rensburggade 14, 9000 Aalborg, Denmark
Email: grimshaw@hum.aau.dk
Deborah Abdel Nabi
Faculty of Wellbeing and Social Sciences,
The University of Bolton,
Deane Road, Bolton, BL3 5AB, UK
Email: A.Nabi@bolton.ac.uk
Abstract: This study investigates if the Uncanny Valley phenomenon is increased for realistic, human-like characters with an asynchrony of lip movement during speech. An experiment was conducted in which 113 participants rated, a human and a realistic, talking-head, human-like, virtual character over a range of onset asynchronies for both perceived familiarity and human-likeness. The results show that virtual characters were regarded as more uncanny (less familiar and human-like) than humans and that increasing levels of asynchrony increased perception of uncanniness. Interestingly, participants were more sensitive to the uncanny in characters when the audio stream preceded the visual stream than with asynchronous footage where the video stream preceded the audio stream. This paper considers possible psychological explanations as to why the magnitude and direction of an asynchrony of speech dictates magnitude of perceived uncanniness and the implications of this in character design.
Keywords: onset asynchrony; audio-visual speech; Uncanny Valley; virtual characters; realism; human-like; lip-sync; asynchrony of speech; lip movement; 3D environments; video games; strangeness; familiarity; audio stream; visual stream; viewer perception; digital human.
The uncanny valley hypothesis, proposed already in the 1970s, suggests that almost but not fully humanlike artificial characters will trigger a profound sense of unease. This hypothesis has become widely acknowledged both in the popular media and scientific research. Surprisingly, empirical evidence for the hypothesis has remained inconsistent. In the present article, we reinterpret the original uncanny valley hypothesis and review empirical evidence for different theoretically motivated uncanny valley hypotheses. The uncanny valley could be understood as the naïve claim that any kind of human-likeness manipulation will lead to experienced negative affinity at close-to-realistic levels. More recent hypotheses have suggested that the uncanny valley would be caused by artificial–human categorization difficulty or by a perceptual mismatch between artificial and human features. Original formulation also suggested that movement would modulate the uncanny valley. The reviewed empirical literature failed to provide consistent support for the naïve uncanny valley hypothesis or the modulatory effects of movement. Results on the categorization difficulty hypothesis were still too scarce to allow drawing firm conclusions. In contrast, good support was found for the perceptual mismatch hypothesis. Taken together, the present review findings suggest that the uncanny valley exists only under specific conditions. More research is still needed to pinpoint the exact conditions under which the uncanny valley phenomenon manifests itself.
Stimuli that resemble humans, but are not perfectly human-like, are disliked compared to distinctly human and non-human stimuli. Accounts of this “Uncanny Valley” effect often focus on how changes in human resemblance can evoke different emotional responses. We present an alternate account based on the novel hypothesis that the Uncanny Valley is not directly related to ‘human-likeness’ per se, but instead reflects a more general form of stimulus devaluation that occurs when inhibition is triggered to resolve conflict between competing stimulus-related representations. We consider existing support for this inhibitory-devaluation hypothesis and further assess its feasibility through tests of two corresponding predictions that arise from the link between conflict-resolving inhibition and aversive response: (1) that the pronounced disliking of Uncanny-type stimuli will occur for any image that strongly activates multiple competing stimulus representations, even in the absence of any human-likeness, and (2) that the negative peak of an ‘Uncanny Valley’ should occur at the point of greatest stimulus-related conflict and not (in the presence of human-likeness) always closer to the ‘human’ end of a perceptual continuum. We measured affective responses to a set of line drawings representing non-human animal–animal morphs, in which each continuum midpoint was a bistable image (Experiment 1), as well as to sets of human-robot and human-animal computer-generated morphs (Experiment 2). Affective trends depicting classic Uncanny Valley functions occurred for all continua, including the non-human stimuli. Images at continua midpoints elicited significantly more negative affect than images at endpoints, even when the continua included a human endpoint. This illustrates the feasibility of the inhibitory-devaluation hypothesis and the need for further research into the possibility that the strong dislike of Uncanny-type stimuli reflects the negative affective consequences of cognitive inhibition.
The uncanny valley (UCV) hypothesis describes a non-linear relationship between perceived human-likeness and affective response. The “uncanny valley” refers to an intermediate level of human-likeness that is associated with strong negative affect. Recent studies have suggested that the uncanny valley might result from the categorical perception of human-like stimuli during identification. When presented with stimuli sharing human-like traits, participants attempt to segment the continuum in “human” and “non-human” categories. Due to the ambiguity of stimuli located at a category boundary, categorization difficulty gives rise to a strong, negative affective response. Importantly, researchers who have studied the UCV in terms of categorical perception have focused on categorization responses rather than affective ratings. In the present study, we examined whether the negative affect associated with the UCV might be explained in terms of an individual's degree of exposure to stimuli. In two experiments, we tested a frequency-based model against a categorical perception model using a category-learning paradigm. We manipulated the frequency of exemplars that were presented to participants from two categories during a training phase. We then examined categorization and affective responses functions, as well as the relationship between categorization and affective responses. Supporting previous findings, categorization responses suggested that participants acquired novel category structures that reflected a category boundary. These category structures appeared to influence affective ratings of eeriness. Crucially, participants' ratings of eeriness were additionally affected by exemplar frequency. Taken together, these findings suggest that the UCV is determined by both categorical properties as well as the frequency of individual exemplars retained in memory.
Rapid growth in Smartphone use among children affords potential opportunities to target health behaviors such as dietary habits; however, few mobile health applications are specifically designed with these individuals in mind. This brief report describes our step-by-step approach towards developing a mobile health application for targeting nutrition behaviors among children.
Descriptions of the 10 most popular paid and 10 most popular free Smartphone applications available on the Apple iTunes store for ages 4 and up as of March 2012 were qualitatively analyzed. The relevance of key characteristics found in these applications was then further explored for their potential to improve dietary behaviours amongst children, and a mobile application was developed.
Three prominent characteristics of the most popular applications emerged: 1) virtual avatars or characters (observed in 50% of the applications); 2) gaming (observed in 75% of the applications); and 3) social media (observed in 45% of the applications). These features were then incorporated into the design of a mobile health application called Avafeed, which uses a virtual avatar and gaming to help make choosing healthier food options easier among children. The application was successfully released onto the Apple iTunes Store in September 2012.
In this unconventional approach, evidence-based research was combined with information procured from a qualitative review of popular applications available on the Apple iTunes Store in order to design a potentially relevant and popular mobile health application for use among children.
We are interested in how digital games can be designed for learning in the affective domain. Our studies of how emotions are embedded in games and how games sustain affective learning involve observing gameplay and identifying recurring elements that we identify as design patterns. Design patterns help us think about the role of affect in play, what affect in games looks like, and the different ways affective learning might be achieved in educational and serious games. In this article, we describe and discuss several patterns related to understanding emotions, affective representation, and socioemotional interactions, which are essential components of affective learning. These patterns provide a language to conceptualize how affective learning might be designed into future game projects. To conclude, we discuss the development of a taxonomy of affective patterns to sustain socioemotional learning. We thus hope to stimulate the development of more human-oriented educational games in this domain.
More than 40 years ago, Masahiro Mori, a robotics professor at the Tokyo Institute of Technology, wrote an essay [1] on how he envisioned people's reactions to robots that looked and acted almost like a human. In particular, he hypothesized that a person's response to a humanlike robot would abruptly shift from empathy to revulsion as it approached, but failed to attain, a lifelike appearance. This descent into eeriness is known as the uncanny valley. The essay appeared in an obscure Japanese journal called Energy in 1970, and in subsequent years, it received almost no attention. However, more recently, the concept of the uncanny valley has rapidly attracted interest in robotics and other scientific circles as well as in popular culture. Some researchers have explored its implications for human-robot interaction and computer-graphics animation, whereas others have investigated its biological and social roots. Now interest in the uncanny valley should only intensify, as technology evolves and researchers build robots that look human. Although copies of Mori's essay have circulated among researchers, a complete version hasn't been widely available. The following is the first publication of an English translation that has been authorized and reviewed by Mori. (See “Turning Point” in this issue for an interview with Mori.).
Dr. Masahiro Mori's robotics design theory, the Uncanny Valley, has become a common reference in virtual character design. The theory holds that robots whose appearance is very close to being human, but not fully, will evoke a very negative human reaction. The theory is often referenced in design outside of robots, especially in video games, but there is very little data to support this application. The attempts at photorealistic graphics in the latest round of video game hardware have made reference to the valley common in even mass media discussion. This study asked 60 subjects their opinions on 75 different virtual characters from both inside and outside video games to investigate the relationship between human-like appearance and attraction. The results found definite parallels between Mori's predictions with robots and subject opinion on virtual characters, and have direct application to video game character design.
It seems natural to assume that the more closely robots come to resemble people, the more likely they are to elicit the kinds of responses people direct toward each other. However, subtle flaws in appearance and movement only seem eerie in very humanlike robots. This uncanny phenomenon may be symptomatic of en- tities that elicit a model of a human other but do not measure up to it. If so, a very humanlike robot may provide the best means of finding out what kinds of be- havior are perceived as human, since deviations from a human other are more obvious. In pursuing this line of inquiry, it is essential to identify the mechanisms in- volved in evaluations of human likeness. One hypoth- esis is that an uncanny robot elicits an innate fear of death and culturally-supported defenses for coping with death's inevitability. An experiment, which borrows from the methods of terror management research, was performed to test this hypothesis. Across all questions subjects who were exposed to a still image of an uncanny humanlike robot had on average a heightened preference for worldview supporters and a diminished preference for worldview threats relative to the control group.
This article approaches childhood as an emergent condition in which children, their caregivers and toys all take an active part and argues that the focus on toys opens important insights for studying processes of social reproduction and change. This is demonstrated by describing children’s interactions with virtual pets that encourage children to become mobile in a manner that is only possible through digital technologies. This mobility is at heart of local orientations of how to be part of the world, but by subscribing to it children are not simply mimicking the adult world: when children make the pursuit of mobility their own project, they also make it distinctively theirs.
Masahiro Mori observed that as robots come to look more humanlike, they seem more familiar, until a point is reached at which subtle deviations from human norms cause them to look creepy. He referred to this dip in fa- miliarity and corresponding surge in strangeness as the uncanny valley. The eerie sensation associated with a mismatch between human expectations and a robot's behavior provides a useful source of feedback to improve the cognitive models implemented in the robot. Is the uncanny valley a necessary property of near-humanlike forms? This paper contributes to ongoing work in un- derstanding the nature and causes of the uncanny valley by means of an experiment: 56 participants were asked to rate 13 robots and 1 human, shown in video clips, on a very mechanical (1) to very humanlike (9) scale, a very strange (1) to very familiar (9) scale, and a not eerie (0) to extremely eerie (10) scale. Contrary to earlier studies with morphs (MacDorman and Ishiguro, 2006), plots of average and median values for ratings on these scales do not reveal a single U-shaped valley as predicted by Mori's uncanny valley hypothesis (1970), although his hypothesis allows for some variation owing to movement. Robots rated similarly on the mechanical versus human- like scale can be rated quite difierently on the strange versus familiar or the eeriness scales. The results in- dicate that the perceived human likeness of a robot is not the only factor determining the perceived familiarity, strangeness, or eeriness of the robot. This suggests that other factors could be manipulated to vary the familiar- ity, strangeness, or eeriness of a robot independently of its human likeness.
Mori's Uncanny Valley Hypothesis(1,2) proposes that the perception of humanlike characters such as robots and, by extension, avatars (computer-generated characters) can evoke negative or positive affect (valence) depending on the object's degree of visual and behavioral realism along a dimension of human likeness (DHL) (Figure 1). But studies of affective valence of subjective responses to variously realistic non-human characters have produced inconsistent findings (3, 4, 5, 6). One of a number of reasons for this is that human likeness is not perceived as the hypothesis assumes. While the DHL can be defined following Mori's description as a smooth linear change in the degree of physical humanlike similarity, subjective perception of objects along the DHL can be understood in terms of the psychological effects of categorical perception (CP) (7). Further behavioral and neuroimaging investigations of category processing and CP along the DHL and of the potential influence of the dimension's underlying category structure on affective experience are needed. This protocol therefore focuses on the DHL and allows examination of CP. Based on the protocol presented in the video as an example, issues surrounding the methodology in the protocol and the use in "uncanny" research of stimuli drawn from morph continua to represent the DHL are discussed in the article that accompanies the video. The use of neuroimaging and morph stimuli to represent the DHL in order to disentangle brain regions neurally responsive to physical human-like similarity from those responsive to category change and category processing is briefly illustrated.
The Uncanny Valley Hypothesis (Mori, 1970) predicts that perceptual difficulty distinguishing between a humanlike object (e.g., lifelike prosthetic hand, mannequin) and its human counterpart evokes negative affect. Research has focused on affect, with inconsistent results, but little is known about how objects along the hypothesis' dimension of human likeness (DHL) are actually perceived. This study used morph continua based on human and highly realistic computer-generated (avatar) faces to represent the DHL. Total number and dwell time of fixations to facial features were recorded while participants ( = 60) judged avatar versus human category membership of the faces in a forced choice categorization task. Fixation and dwell data confirmed the face feature hierarchy (eyes, nose, and mouth in this order of importance) across the DHL. There were no further findings for fixation. A change in the relative importance of these features was found for dwell time, with greater preferential processing of eyes and mouth of categorically ambiguous faces compared with unambiguous avatar faces. There were no significant differences between ambiguous and human faces. These findings applied for men and women, though women generally dwelled more on the eyes to the disadvantage of the nose. The mouth was unaffected by gender. In summary, the relative importance of facial features changed on the DHL's non-human side as a function of categorization ambiguity. This change was indicated by dwell time only, suggesting greater depth of perceptual processing of the eyes and mouth of ambiguous faces compared with these features in unambiguous avatar faces.
The realistic depiction of lifelike virtual humans has been the goal of many movie makers in the last decade. Recently, films such as Tron: Legacy and The Curious Case of Benjamin Button have produced highly realistic characters. In the real-time domain, there is also a need to deliver realistic virtual characters, with the increase in popularity of interactive drama video games (such as L.A. Noire™ or Heavy Rain™). There have been mixed reactions from audiences to lifelike characters used in movies and games, with some saying that the increased realism highlights subtle imperfections, which can be disturbing. Some developers opt for a stylized rendering (such as cartoon-shading) to avoid a negative reaction [Thompson 2004]. In this paper, we investigate some of the consequences of choosing realistic or stylized rendering in order to provide guidelines for developers for creating appealing virtual characters. We conducted a series of psychophysical experiments to determine whether render style affects how virtual humans are perceived. Motion capture with synchronized eye-tracked data was used throughout to animate custom-made virtual model replicas of the captured actors.
There are a number of psychological phenomena in which dramatic emotional responses are evoked by seemingly innocuous perceptual stimuli. A well known example is the 'uncanny valley' effect whereby a near human-looking artifact can trigger feelings of eeriness and repulsion. Although such phenomena are reasonably well documented, there is no quantitative explanation for the findings and no mathematical model that is capable of predicting such behavior. Here I show (using a Bayesian model of categorical perception) that differential perceptual distortion arising from stimuli containing conflicting cues can give rise to a perceptual tension at category boundaries that could account for these phenomena. The model is not only the first quantitative explanation of the uncanny valley effect, but it may also provide a mathematical explanation for a range of social situations in which conflicting cues give rise to negative, fearful or even violent reactions.
To obtain reliable measures researchers prefer multiple-item questionnaires rather than single-item tests. Multiple-item questionnaires may be costly however and time-consuming for participants to complete. They therefore frequently administer two-item measures, the reliability of which is commonly assessed by computing a reliability coefficient. There is some disagreement, however, what the most appropriate indicator of scale reliability is when a measure is composed of two items. The most frequently reported reliability statistic for multiple-item scales is Cronbach’s coefficient alpha and many researchers report this coefficient for their two-item measure. Others however claim that coefficient alpha is inappropriate and meaningless for two-item scales. Instead, they recommend using the Pearson correlation coefficient as a measure of reliability. Still others argue that the inter-item correlation equals the split-half reliability estimate for the two-item measure and they advocate the use of the Spearman-Brown formula to estimate the reliability of the total scale. As these recommendations are reported without elaborating, there is considerable confusion among end users as to the best reliability coefficient for two-item measures. This note aims to clarify the issue.
The 'Uncanny Valley' refers to a sense of unease and discomfort when people look at increasingly realistic virtual humans. Despite growing academic interest in the Uncanny Valley our understanding is limited and there has been little rigorous questioning to determine if the phenomenon actually exists. The Uncanny Valley questions widely held assumptions about the correlation between realism and believability within a virtual world. There is considerable anecdotal evidence for the uncanny from film, CGI and sculpture, but this does not in itself support the valley model. Four hypothesises are proposed; considering the role of presence, mismatch of cue realism, the contribution of the eyes and cultural habituation. Future research aims are then described in order to experimentally test the Uncanny Valley.
Although the uncanny exists, the inherent, unavoidable dip (or valley) may be an illusion. Extremely abstract robots can be uncanny if the aesthetic is off, as can cosmetically atypical humans. Thus, the uncanny occupies a continuum ranging from the abstract to the real, although norms of acceptability may narrow as one approaches human likeness. However, if the aesthetic is right, any level of realism or abstraction can be appealing. If so, then avoiding or creating an uncanny effect just depends on the quality of the aesthetic design, regardless of the level of realism. The author's preliminary experiments on human reaction to near-realistic androids appear to support this hypothesis.
This study emphasizes the need for standardized measurement tools for human robot interaction (HRI). If we are to make progress
in this field then we must be able to compare the results from different studies. Aliterature review has been performed on
the measurements of five key concepts in HRI: anthropomorphism, animacy, likeability, perceived intelligence, and perceived
safety. The results have been distilled into five consistent questionnaires using semantic differential scales. We report
reliability and validity indicators based on several empirical studies that used these questionnaires. It is our hope that
these questionnaires can be used by robot developers to monitor their progress. Psychologists are invited to further develop
the questionnaires by adding new concepts, and to conduct further validations where it appears necessary.
This paper discusses the issues pertinent to the development of a meaningful social interaction between robots and people through employing degrees of anthropomorphism in a robot’s physical design and behaviour. As robots enter our social space, we will inherently project/impose our interpretation on their actions similar to the techniques we employ in rationalising, for example, a pet’s behaviour. This propensity to anthropomorphise is not seen as a hindrance to social robot development, but rather a useful mechanism that requires judicious examination and employment in social robot research.
As virtual humans approach photorealistic perfection, they risk making real humans uncomfortable. This intriguing phenomenon, known as the uncanny valley, is well known but not well understood. In an effort to demystify the causes of the uncanny valley, this paper proposes several perceptual, cognitive, and social mechanisms that have already helped address riddles like empathy, mate selection, threat avoidance, cognitive dissonance, and psychological defenses. In the four studies described herein, a computer generated human character’s facial proportions, skin texture, and level of detail were varied to examine their effect on perceived eeriness, human likeness, and attractiveness. In Study I, texture photorealism and polygon count increased human likeness. In Study II, texture photorealism heightened the accuracy of human judgments of ideal facial proportions. In Study III, atypical facial proportions were shown to be more disturbing on photorealistic faces than on other faces. In Study IV, a mismatch in the size and texture of the eyes and face was especially prone to make a character eerie. These results contest the depiction of the uncanny valley as a simple relation between comfort level and human likeness. This paper concludes by introducing a set of design principles for bridging the uncanny valley.
This study examines the roles of gender and visual realism in the persuasiveness of speakers. Participants were presented with a persuasive passage delivered by a male or female person, virtual human, or virtual character. They were then assessed on attitude change and their ratings of the argument, message, and speaker. The results indicated that the virtual speakers were as effective at changing attitudes as real people. Male participants were more persuaded when the speaker was female than when the speaker was male, whereas female participants were more persuaded when the speaker was male than when the speaker was female. Cross gender interactions occurred across all conditions, suggesting that some of the gender stereotypes that occur with people may carry over to interaction with virtual characters. Ratings of the perceptions of the speaker were more favorable for virtual speakers than for human speakers. We discuss the application of these findings in the design of persuasive human computer interfaces. AUTHOR KEYWORDS
This paper reports a pilot study of how to utilize simulated animal companions to encourage students to pay more effort in their study in the classroom environment. A class of students is divided into several teams. Every student keeps her own individual animal companion, called My-Pet, which keeps a simple performance record of its master for self-reflection. Also, every team has a team animal companion, called Our-Pet, kept by all teammates. Our-Pet has a collective performance record formed by all team members' performance records. The design of Our-Pet intends to help a team set a team goal through a competitive game among Our-Pets, and promotes positive and helpful interactions among teammates. A preliminary experiment is conducted in a fifth-grade class with 31 students in an elementary school, and the experimental results show that there are both cognitive and affective gains.
In this paper, we present evidence that although current models for introduction of robotic companions stress individual encounters, a social community alternative is promising. This argument emerges from an experiment we conducted with a small interactive robot at two local nursing homes. Here we give a brief introduction to the robot and our experience at the homes. We compare the robot used to a semi-robotic toy whose use initially suggested to us the benefits of social community models in the presentation of robotics to the elderly. We find that even where individual encounters are significant, sensitivity to social dimensions improve the benefits of these encounters
Artificial objects often subjectively look eerie when their appearance to some extent resembles a human, which is known as the uncanny valley phenomenon. From a cognitive psychology perspective, several explanations of the phenomenon have been put forth, two of which are object categorization and realism inconsistency. Recently, MacDorman and Chattopadhyay (2016) reported experimental data as evidence in support of the latter. In our estimation, however, their results are still consistent with categorization-based stranger avoidance. In this Discussions paper, we try to describe why categorization-based stranger avoidance remains a viable explanation, despite the evidence of MacDorman and Chattopadhyay, and how it offers a more inclusive explanation of the impression of eeriness in the uncanny valley phenomenon.
Virtual characters contribute strongly to the entire visuals of 3D animated films. However, designing believable characters remains a challenging task. Artists rely on stylization to increase appeal or expressivity, exaggerating or softening specific features. In this paper we analyze two of the most influential factors that define how a character looks: shape and material. With the help of artists, we design a set of carefully crafted stimuli consisting of different stylization levels for both parameters, and analyze how different combinations affect the perceived realism, appeal, eeriness, and familiarity of the characters. Moreover, we additionally investigate how this affects the perceived intensity of different facial expressions (sadness, anger, happiness, and surprise). Our experiments reveal that shape is the dominant factor when rating realism and expression intensity, while material is the key component for appeal. Furthermore our results show that realism alone is a bad predictor for appeal, eeriness, or attractiveness.
The "Uncanny Valley" theory explains the counter-intuitive phenomenon where people may get suddenly uncomfortable with an artificial entity when it becomes very similar to humans. We propose the existence of an "uncanny valley" for embodied interaction, when a user's body motions in the physical space (the locus of interaction) are incompletely mapped into effects in the virtual space (the focus of interaction). It is generally assumed that this mapping should be as veridical as possible to promote seamless embodied interaction. Many design factors (e.g., synchronicity, sensitivity, shared realism) contribute to veridical locus-focus mapping. We intentionally varied the level of veridicality of these different factors, affecting how the user's movements were mapped to virtual effects. Our results indicate that there is a dip (valley) in user preferences when the design contains mixed degrees of veridicality. Thus, when one veridical dimension is limited, designers should likewise reduce the veridicality of other dimensions.
A substantial body of empirical research now supports the importance of client and therapist characteristics as well as the therapeutic relationship between them in predicting therapeutic change. Recent studies have increasingly recognised Virtual Reality (VR) and Augmented Reality (AR) as potentially effective technologies in the treatment of specific phobias. Despite these results, there is little theoretical and empirical understanding of how technologies actually support the users (i.e., client and therapist) in their respective but closely related activities; how they are actually used; and how they modify the therapeutic process. This article reviews the state of the art related to both the Human–Computer Interactions issues and the clinical aspects of the therapeutic process in both technology-mediated and non-mediated contexts, and proposes the theoretical model of the VR/AR-Mediated Therapeutic Process, which integrates the concepts from both fields. The applications and relevancy of this model are also discussed.
Common guidelines followed in the animation community include the idea that cartoon characters should be exaggerated to better convey emotion and intent, whereas more realistic characters should have “matching” realistic motion. We investigated the effects of rendering style and amount of facial motion on perceptions of character likeability, intelligence, and extraversion. We used cartoon and more realistic-looking characters that were animated with tracked actor motion. The motion was exaggerated and damped in 10% increments up to a 40% difference from the original motion. We discovered that motion changes ±20% from original motion affected perceptions of likeability and intelligence differently in the realistic-looking and cartoon characters. The realistic-looking characters benefited from increased motion whereas the cartoon characters benefitted from damped motion. Furthermore, the amount of facial motion and perceptions of extraversion were significantly correlated.
The uncanny valley hypothesis states that the acceptability of an artificial character will not increase linearly in relation to its likeness to human form. Instead, after an initial rise in acceptability there will be a pronounced decrease when the character is similar, but not identical to human form (Mori, 1970/2012). Moreover, it has been claimed but never directly tested that movement would accentuate this dip and make moving characters less acceptable. We used a number of full-body animated computer characters along with a parametrically defined motion set to examine the effect of motion quality on the uncanny valley. We found that improving the motion quality systematically improved the acceptability of the characters. In particular, the character classified in the deepest location of the uncanny valley became more acceptable when it was animated. Our results showed that although an uncanny valley was found for static characters, the deepening of the valley with motion, originally predicted by Mori (1970/2012), was not obtained.
The author examines the history of artists' depictions of fanciful organisms that are formed by combining parts of various species. Broadly tracing the progression of this pursuit from prehistory through the Ancient, Renaissance and Romantic Periods and up to the 20th century and contemporary genetic art, the article analyzes the seemingly consistent effort to render these forms simultaneously nonthreatening or vulnerable in attitude and visually realistic. The author asks whether this practice, which seems to stem from aesthetic concerns, is sufficiently critical in regards to current trends in genetic engineering.
Much energy has been invested in the development of human-like robots and animated figures capable of socially interacting with humans. Mori (1971) suggested that as a robot becomes more human-like, observers will rate it with increasing familiarity until it reaches a point at which subtle differences from human-like appearance and movement produce a feeling of profound discomfort in the observer, an effect known as the Uncanny Valley. An alternative idea, based on theory of motor resonance, suggests that as the movements of a robot become more human-like, they resonate with our own motor representations and we will be more likely to consider them familiar. Here we used a computer generated figure animated with a walking movement captured from a human actor. Movement was varied in its naturalness across 10 levels by manipulating a) the joint articulation of the arms and legs; b) the phase relationship between opposing arms and legs; or c) increasing the magnitude of a short, physiologically implausible jerk at a random point in the walk cycle. Two groups of participants viewed either a mannequin (N=22) or a human-like figure (N=18) walking for 4s, then rated the walker according to humanness, familiarity, and eeriness. Ratings across all three movement manipulations and for both figure types increased (or decreased for eeriness) linearly as the movement became more natural, inconsistent with the Uncanny Valley hypothesis. Plots of familiarity and eeriness ratings as a function of humanness also showed a linear increase (or decrease) with no valley, even as humanness ratings approached the maximum possible rating. These findings are more consistent with the proposal that as a computer-generated figure's movements become more like the movement of a human, they produce increasingly greater feelings of familiarity. Resonance of the figures movements within the motor system of the observer may underlie such feelings.
Human observers often experience strongly negative impressions of human-like objects falling within a particular range of visual similarity to real humans (the “uncanny valley” phenomenon). We hypothesized that negative impressions in the uncanny valley phenomenon are related to a difficulty in object categorization. We produced stimulus images by morphing two of each of real, stuffed, and cartoon human face images (Experiment 1). Observers were asked to categorize each of these images as either category and evaluated the likability of the image. The results revealed that the longest latency, the highest ambiguity in categorization, and the lowest likability score co-occurred at consistent morphing percentages. Similar results were obtained even when we employed stimulus images that were created by morphing two of each of real, stuffed, and cartoon dog images (Experiment 2). However, the effect of categorization difficulty on evaluation was weak when two real human faces were morphed (Experiment 3). These results suggest that the difficulty in categorizing an object as either of two dissimilar categories is linked to negative evaluation regardless of whether the object is human-related or not.
The uncanny valley theory (UVT) (Mori, 1970) proposes that when stimuli are defined by a near-perfect resemblance to humans they cause people to experience greater negative affect relative to when they have perfect human likeness (HL) or little to no HL. Empirical research to support this non-linear relationship between negative affect and HL has been inconclusive, however, and a satisfactory causal explanation has not yet emerged to explain existing findings. In two studies, we examined the relationship between HL and eeriness using digital human faces. First, we examined the relationship between HL and eeriness while controlling for extraneous variation in stimulus appearance. We created two HL continua by manipulating the facial proportions and polygon count of several digital human models. Second, we proposed and tested two causal hypotheses regarding the uncanny valley phenomenon that we refer to as category conflict and feature atypicality. We created two additional HL continua by manipulating the skin coloration and category membership of models. Across these continua we introduced an atypical feature. Our results suggest that HL is linearly related to emotional response, except under conditions where HL varies by category membership, suggesting that previous empirical findings might be explained as a category conflict.
The uncanny valley-the unnerving nature of humanlike robots-is an intriguing idea, but both its existence and its underlying cause are debated. We propose that humanlike robots are not only unnerving, but are so because their appearance prompts attributions of mind. In particular, we suggest that machines become unnerving when people ascribe to them experience (the capacity to feel and sense), rather than agency (the capacity to act and do). Experiment 1 examined whether a machine's humanlike appearance prompts both ascriptions of experience and feelings of unease. Experiment 2 tested whether a machine capable of experience remains unnerving, even without a humanlike appearance. Experiment 3 investigated whether the perceived lack of experience can also help explain the creepiness of unfeeling humans and philosophical zombies. These experiments demonstrate that feelings of uncanniness are tied to perceptions of experience, and also suggest that experience-but not agency-is seen as fundamental to humans, and fundamentally lacking in machines.
Virtual character is a significant application in the research field of technology-enhanced learning. In this study, the concept of animal companions, ‘non-smart’ virtual characters, is proposed as a way to encourage students to promote effort-making learning behaviours. The two underpinning design rationales are first discussed followed by the description of the development of a practical application, the My-Pet v2 system. A preliminary experiment was conducted to examine the system usability in terms of cognitive, affective and time-on-task characteristics. The results reveal that participants in the group using a complete version of My-Pet v2 showed better quality of effort-making learning behaviours. Some implications and future research directions are also discussed.
Female college students showing a high degree of fear of dead and bloody rats were treated in groups by either (1) Systematic Desensitization (SD), (2) Graduated Prolonged Exposure (GPE), an experimental extinction-based technique involving prolonged exposures to a graded hierarchy of fear-provoking stimuli, or (3) Cognitive Restructuring (CR), a rational discussion technique emphasizing “perceptual relearning” or relabeling of the fear-provoking stimuli. On a behavioral avoidance measure, only GPE resulted in significant fear reduction over a nontreated control group. On a subjective measure of fear, however, only CR produced significant improvement, with GPE showing a strong trend in the favorable direction. SD failed to approach significant improvement on either measure. The results were interpreted as supporting a combined treatment involving both GPE and CR for the type of irrational fear which involves feelings of disgust and nausea.
We examined the relationships between sensitivity to three kinds of disgust (core, animal-reminder, and contamination) and personality traits, behavioral avoidance, physiological responding, and anxiety disorder symptoms. Study 1 revealed that these disgusts are particularly associated with neuroticism and behavioral inhibition. Moreover, the three disgusts showed a theoretically consistent pattern of relations on four disgust-relevant behavioral avoidance tasks in Study 2. Similar results were found in Study 3 such that core disgust was significantly related to increased physiological responding during exposure to vomit, while animal-reminder disgust was specifically related to physiological responding during exposure to blood. Lastly, Study 4 revealed that each of the three disgusts showed a different pattern of relations with fear of contamination, fear of animals, and fear of blood–injury relevant stimuli. These findings provide support for the convergent and divergent validity of core, animal-reminder, and contamination disgust. These findings also highlight the possibility that the three kinds of disgust may manifest as a function of different psychological mechanisms (i.e., oral incorporation, mortality defense, disease avoidance) that may give rise to different clinical conditions. However, empirical examination of the mechanisms that underlie the three disgusts will require further refinement of the psychometric properties of the disgust scale.