We need to know the real intentions of participants that are not expressed by verbal languages This means that not only verbal information but also non-verbal information (i e , gestures, facial expression, eyes of participant, etc.) is a very important factor We proposed and implemented MAJIC, a multi-party videoconferencing system that enables eye contact among people in remote places, with l...

Presence and copresence have been key goals of researchers and developers of shared virtual environments. Much research has assumed that the two reinforce each other; that is, an enhanced sense of presence enhances copresence and vice versa. In this essay we question this assumption, and provide some examples in which users experience high presence and low copresence and the opposite. Although ...

Human movement in virtual environments (VEs) is a largely unstudied area, and there are no well-established methods of measuring it in VEs. Consequently, it is unclear how movement affects the experiential side of VEs. We introduce a novel method of measuring and modelling human movement. A specific information entropy-based modelling method enabled us to identify different movement patterns an...

The analysis of agency, a very close concept to presence, is of great help for acquiring insights into how the sense of presence is acquired in the developing child and also about the experience of presence itself. Empirical evidence coming from Cognitive Developmental Research together with the positive outcome of people with autism (who are not generally able to act “as if”) when participatin...

poor was already rampant. Alleviation (beyond rather ineffective policing laws) was, in Northern Germany, primarily in the hands of private philanthropy and protestant clergymen. Dr Weidmann surveys the establishment of poor relief in Hamburg, Oldenburg, Prague, Vienna, Hanover, Frankfurt/Main, and Berlin, with specific attention to the care of the sick poor. She shows that an effective system ...

Collaborative Virtual Environments (CVEs) that can be simultaneously shared by a number of participants located in different geographical locations, provide new possibilities for communication and collaboration, with a lot of potential for the way we work and exchange information. However, in order for such systems to be successful they need to provide the participants with a compelling experie...

In modern societies people tend to spend more time in front of computer screens than outdoors. Along with an increasing degree of realism displayed in digital environments, simulated weather appears more and more realistic and more often implemented in digital environments. Research has found that the actual weather influences behavior and mood. In this paper we experimentally examine the effec...

We present here a system for controlling the eye gaze of a virtual embodied conversational agent able to perceive the physical environment in which it interacts. This system is inspired by known components of human visual attention system and reproduces its limitations in terms of visual acuity, sensitivity to movement, limitations of short-memory and object pursuit. The aim of this coupling be...

Individuals that combine features of both genders-gender blends-are sometimes appealing and sometimes not. Heretofore, this difference was explained entirely in terms of sexual selection. In contrast, we propose that part of individuals' preference for gender blends is due to the cognitive effort required to classify them, and that such effort depends on the context in which a blend is judged. ...

In this article, we examine the hypothesis that in masculine cultures or in other contexts that emphasize competitive achievement, those with higher performance capabilities will feel empowered to have input in decisions and, hence, will desire opportunities to voice their opinions about decisions to be made. In contrast, in more feminine cultures or in other contexts that value the importance ...