Do human-human social interactions carry over to human-virtual human social interactions? How does this affect future interface designers? We replicated classical tests of social influence known as the social facilitation and inhibition effects. Social facilitation/inhibition theory states that when in the presence of others, people perform simple tasks better and complex tasks worse. Participants were randomly assigned to perform both simple and complex tasks alone and in the presence of either a real human, a projected virtual human, or a virtual human in a head-mounted display. Our results showed participants were inhibited by the presence of others, whether real or virtual. That is, participants performed worse on the complex task, both in terms of percent correct and reaction times, when in the presence of others than when alone. Social facilitation did not occur with the real or virtual human. We discuss these results and their implications for future interface designers.

Traditionally, students study plays by reading from a book. However, reading dialogue on paper does not always communicate the various emotions and actions that help people understand the significance of the person-to-person interactions that are represented.

This study examines the roles of gender and visual realism in the persuasiveness of speakers. Participants were presented with a persuasive passage delivered by a male or female person, virtual human, or virtual character. They were then assessed on attitude change and their ratings of the argument, message, and speaker. The results indicated that the virtual speakers were as effective at changing attitudes as real people. Male participants were more persuaded when the speaker was female than when the speaker was male, whereas female participants were more persuaded when the speaker was male than when the speaker was female. Cross gender interactions occurred across all conditions, suggesting that some of the gender stereotypes that occur with people may carry over to interaction with virtual characters. Ratings of the perceptions of the speaker were more favorable for virtual speakers than for human speakers. We discuss the application of these findings in the design of persuasive human computer interfaces.

Augmented reality (AR) systems present a mixture of virtual and real objects. The challenge for AR system evaluators is how to tell whether the virtual world is effective at conveying the sense of reality. It may never be possible or even necessary to determine whether the user is truly fooled in all situations or is merely suspending disbelief, but one can objectively measure the effectiveness of an AR environment with a task-based approach. We present the results of our first such experiment, involving low-level perceptual tasks of recognition and depth matching.

We describe a between-subjects experiment that compared four different methods of travel and their effect on cognition and paths taken in an immersive virtual environment (IVE). Participants answered a set of questions based on Crook's condensation of Bloom's taxonomy that assessed their cognition of the IVE with respect to knowledge, understanding and application, and higher mental processes. Participants also drew a sketch map of the IVE and the objects within it. The users' sense of presence was measured using the Steed-Usoh-Slater Presence Questionnaire. The participants' position and head orientation were automatically logged during their exposure to the virtual environment. These logs were later used to create visualizations of the paths taken. Path analysis, such as exploring the overlaid path visualizations and dwell data information, revealed further differences among the travel techniques. Our results suggest that, for applications where problem solving and evaluation of information is important or where opportunity to train is minimal, then having a large tracked space so that the participant can walk around the virtual environment provides benefits over common virtual travel techniques.