Improving Context Understanding Using Avatar's Affective Expressions Reflecting Operator's Mental States

Abstract

Serious games are useful for acquiring various skills, but virtual experiences are often not commensurate with the real world. We believe that appropriate feedback can help operators who control avatars in the virtual world deepen their understanding of the relationship between the avatar and other characters in the virtual world. The aim of this study is to assist the operator to understand the context of a virtual world by using the avatar's affective expressions to reflect the operator's mental state. We conducted an experiment to investigate whether the appropriate feedback from the avatar's affective expressions can enhance the operator's understanding of the context in the virtual world. In the experiment, we used two types of avatars: a ``feedback avatar'' that provided feedback reflected the operator's mental states and an ``expression avatar'' that randomly provided the same affective expressions. As a result, we suggest that the affective expressions of the ``feedback avatar'' that were matched to the participants' mental states may enhance the understanding of the context of the avatar's character in the virtual world.