Investigation of the Relationship between Turn-taking Behaviors and Conversational Atmospheres using Virtual Characters

Abstract

Existing literature has proposed the use of conversational agents/robots’ non-verbal behaviors to smooth communication between agents/robots and humans. The use of turn-taking behaviors by conversational agents/robots has also been studied to improve communication. However, few studies have investigated whether people distinguish conversational atmosphere types from turn-taking behaviors. In this study, we developed a character conversation simulator by controlling the degree of overlap and investigated the association between turn-taking behaviors (overlaps/gaps) and conversational atmosphere types. The experimental results demonstrate that the major conversational atmosphere types can be determined by changing only the degree of overlap.