Natural Behavior of a Listening Agent

Abstract. In contrast to the variety of listening behaviors produced in humanto-human interaction, most virtual agents sit or stand passively when a user speaks. This is a reflection of the fact that although the correct responsive behavior of a listener during a conversation is often related to the semantics, the state of current speech understanding technology is such that semantic information is unavailable until after an utterance is complete. This paper will illustrate that appropriate listening behavior can also be generated by other features of a speaker’s behavior that are available in real time such as speech quality, posture shifts and head movements. This paper presents a mapping from these real-time obtainable features of a human speaker to agent listening behaviors.

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2005
• Where: IVA
• Authors: R. M. Maatman, Jonathan Gratch, Stacy Marsella
• Keywords: Appropriate Listening Behavior, Correct Responsive Behavior, IVA 2005, Listening Behaviors