Knowing Me, Knowing AU

How Should We Design Agent-Mediated Mimicry?

Conference Paper (2025)
Author(s)

A. Axelsson (TU Delft - Interactive Intelligence)

W. Chen (TU Delft - Intelligent Systems)

D. van Sinttruije (TU Delft - Interactive Intelligence)

I. Lefter (TU Delft - System Engineering)

L. Rook (TU Delft - Economics of Technology and Innovation)

C.M. Jonker (TU Delft - Interactive Intelligence)

Catharine Oertel (TU Delft - Interactive Intelligence)

Research Group
Interactive Intelligence
DOI related publication
https://doi.org/10.1145/3715336.3735687
More Info
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Publication Year
2025
Language
English
Research Group
Interactive Intelligence
Pages (from-to)
253-270
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Abstract

A lack of self-awareness of communicative behaviours can lead to disadvantages in important interactions. Video recordings as a tool for self-observation have been widely adopted to initiate behaviour change and reflection. Seeing oneself in a recording can lead to negative affect. Forcing an external perspective can lead to cognitive dissonance. Avatars and virtual agents have the advantage that they can copy a human's behaviour while potentially avoiding this dissonance. To explore the design space of mimicking agents, we set up a user study where a video baseline is compared to agent-mediated conditions ranging from idle non-verbal behaviour to complete mimicry of the voice and face. We show that participants gain increased self-awareness from seeing themselves mediated through the virtual agent. We further discuss qualitative observations for the future design of systems that aid in self-reflection, and particularly note that partial mimicry seems to be less appreciated than full mimicry.