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Behavioral and Symbolic Fillers as Delay Mitigation for Embodied Conversational Agents in Virtual Reality
IEEE Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics
|October 3, 2025
Summary
Behavioral fillers in virtual reality communication significantly improve user experience by reducing perceived delays and enhancing agent naturalness. These multimodal fillers are preferred over symbolic indicators for more positive interactions with embodied conversational agents.
Area of Science:
- Human-Computer Interaction
- Virtual Reality
- Artificial Intelligence
Background:
- Delays in embodied conversational agent (ECA) responses within virtual reality (VR) can negatively impact user experience.
- Large language models can cause response latencies, leading to unnatural interactions.
Purpose of the Study:
- To investigate the effectiveness of different filler types in mitigating delays during human-ECA communication in VR.
- To enhance user experience and perception of ECAs by reducing perceived response times.
Main Methods:
- A within-subject study involving 24 participants communicating with ECAs in VR.
- Comparison of four delay-mitigation strategies: multimodal behavioral fillers, idle motions, embedded symbolic indicators (progress bar badge), and external symbolic indicators (thinking bubble).
Main Results:
- Behavioral fillers significantly improved perceived response time, presence, humanlikeness, and naturalness.
- Symbolic indicators led to participants looking away from the agent's face more often, without improving perception or presence.
- The majority of participants preferred behavioral fillers over symbolic indicators.
Conclusions:
- Multimodal behavioral fillers are an effective strategy for managing response delays in VR interactions with ECAs.
- Symbolic indicators are less effective and may detract from the interaction quality compared to behavioral approaches.
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