Negative Feedback In Your Face: Examining the Effects of Proxemics and Gender on Learning

• Published in: Intelligent Virtual Agents Vol. 10498; pp. 170 - 183
• Main Authors: Jeong, David C., Feng, Dan, Krämer, Nicole C., Miller, Lynn C., Marsella, Stacy
• Format: Book Chapter
• Language: English
• Published: Switzerland Springer International Publishing AG 01.01.2017; Springer International Publishing
• Series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science
• Subjects: Affect; Attribution theory; Proxemics; Virtual instructor
• ISBN: 9783319674001; 3319674005
• ISSN: 0302-9743; 1611-3349
• DOI: 10.1007/978-3-319-67401-8_19

While applications of virtual agents in training and pedagogy have largely concentrated on positive valenced environments and interactions, human-human interactions certainly also involve a fair share of negativity that is worth exploring in virtual environments. Further, in natural human interaction as well as in virtual spaces, physical actions arguably account for a great deal of variance in our representations of social concepts (e.g., emotions, attitudes). Proxemics, specifically, is a physical cue that can elicit varying perceptions of a social interaction. In the current paper, we explore the combined and individual effects of proxemic distance and gender in a specifically negative feedback educational context. We pursue this with a 2 (Proxemic Distance) \documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{upgreek} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \begin{document}$$\times $$\end{document} 2 (Virtual Instructor Gender) between subject design, where participants actively engage in a learning task with a virtual instructor that provides harsh, negative feedback. While this study demonstrates some anticipated negative reactions to negative feedback from a close distance, such as external attribution of failure, we also observe some unexpected positive outcomes to this negative feedback. Specifically, negative feedback from a close distance has raises positive affect and effort, particularly among male participants interacting with a male virtual professor. Objective measures (head movement data) corroborate these same-gender effects as participants demonstrate more engagement when interacting with a virtual professor of their same gender. The results of the present study have broad implications for the design of intelligent virtual agents for pedagogy and mental health outcomes.