Development and Perception Evaluation of Culture-specific Gaze Behaviors of Virtual Agents

Gaze plays an important role in human-human communication. Adequate gaze control of a virtual agent is also essential for successful and believable human-agent interaction. Researchers on IVA have developed gaze control models by taking account of gaze duration, frequency, and timing of gaze aversion. However, none of this work has considered cultural differences in gaze behaviors. We aimed to investigate cultural differences in gaze behaviors and their perception by developing virtual agents with Japanese gaze behaviors, American gaze behaviors, hybrid gaze behaviors, and full gaze behaviors. We then compared their effects on the impressions of the agents and interactions. Our experimental results with Japanese participants suggest that the impression of the agent is affected by participants' shyness and familiarity of the gaze patterns performed by the agent.