Facial expression of emotions by a virtual narrator for children

Facial expression of emotions by a virtual narrator for children

Nesrine Fourati Adeline Richard Nicolas Sabouret Jean-Claude Martin Emilie Chanoni Céline Clavel 

LIMSI, CNRS, Univ. Paris-Sud, Université Paris-Saclay, Bat 508, rue von Neuman, 91405 Orsay Cedex, France

PSY-NCA, Université de Rouen, 76000 Rouen, France

Corresponding Author Email: 
fourati@limsi.f; nicolas.sabouret@limsi.f; jean-claude.martin@limsi.f; celine.clavel@limsi.f; adeline.richard@etu.univ-rouen.fr; emilie.chanoni@etu.univ-rouen.fr
Page: 
537-556
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DOI: 
https://doi.org/10.3166/RIA.31.537-556
Received: 
| |
Accepted: 
| | Citation

OPEN ACCESS

Abstract: 

This paper focuses on the development of an expressive virtual storyteller for children and raises the challenges encountered to endow a virtual agent with storytelling capabilities. We focus on facial expressions of emotions and we present our computational model based on an appraisal theory of emotion. We also discuss different viewpoints a storyteller can adopt to evaluate the expressive content of a story event. We describe a preliminary study that we conducted with 23 children. We discuss the impact of facial expressions of appraisals on children’s memorization of story events, their perception of characters’ appraisals, their subjective perception of the virtual storyteller and more generally how emotion combines with joint attention.

Keywords: 

expressive virtual storyteller, facial expression, appraisal

1. Introduction
2. Méthodologie
3. Étude exploratoire
4. Conclusion et discussion
Remerciements

Cette recherche a bénéficié du soutien du programme de l’Agence Nationale de la Recherche (ANR), projet NARECA (ANR-13-CORD-0015).

Les auteurs tiennent à remercier les enfants et leurs parents pour avoir accepté de participer à cette étude ainsi que le directeur du centre de loisirs et les animateurs pour leur accueil et leur contribution au bon déroulement de l’étude. Enfin, les auteurs souhaitent remercier Matthieu Courgeon pour l’aide apportée dans le développement du conteur virtuel.

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