The Relation between Gaze Behavior and the Attribution of Emotion: An Empirical Study

摘要

Real-time virtual humans are less believable than hand-animated characters, particularly in the way they perform gaze. In this paper, we provide the results of an empirical study that explores an observer's attribution of emotional state to gaze. We have taken a set of low-level gaze behaviors culled from the nonverbal behavior literature; combined these behaviors based on a dimensional model of emotion; and then generated animations of these behaviors using our gaze model based on the Gaze Warping Transformation (GWT). Then, subjects judged the animations displaying these behaviors. The results, while preliminary, demonstrate that the emotional state attributed to gaze behaviors can be predicted using a dimensional model of emotion; and show the utility of the GWT gaze model in performing bottom-up behavior studies.