TY - CHAP A1 - Förster, Kristina A1 - Hein, Rebecca A1 - Grafe, Silke A1 - Latoschik, Marc Erich A1 - Wienrich, Carolin ED - Basteans, Theo T1 - Fostering Intercultural Competencies in Initial Teacher Education: Implementation of Educational Design Prototypes Using a Social Virtual Reality Environment T2 - Proceedings of Innovate Learning Summit N2 - The combination of globalization and digitalization emphasizes the importance of media-related and intercultural competencies of teacher educators and preservice teachers. This article reports on the initial prototypical implementation of a pedagogical concept to foster such competencies of preservice teachers. The proposed pedagogical concept utilizes a social virtual reality (VR) framework since related work on the characteristics of VR has indicated that this medium is particularly well suited for intercultural professional development processes. The development is integrated into a larger design-based research approach that develops a theory-guided and empirically grounded professional development concept for teacher educators with a special focus on teacher educator technology competencies (TETC8). TETCs provide a suitable competence framework capable of aligning requirements for both media-related and intercultural competencies. In an exploratory study with student teachers, we designed, implemented, and evaluated a pedagogical concept. Reflection reports were qualitatively analyzed to gain insights into factors that facilitate or hinder the implementation of the immersive learning scenario as well as into the participants’ evaluation of their learning experience. The results show that our proposed pedagogical concept is particularly suitable for promoting the experience of social presence, agency, and empathy in the group. KW - Interkulturelles Lernen KW - Lehrerbildung KW - Virtuelle Realität KW - Medienkompetenz KW - International Comparative Research KW - TETCs Y1 - 2021 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-260586 UR - https://www.learntechlib.org/primary/p/220276/ ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Carolus, Astrid A1 - Wienrich, Carolin A1 - Törke, Anna A1 - Friedel, Tobias A1 - Schwietering, Christian A1 - Sperzel, Mareike T1 - ‘Alexa, I feel for you!’ Observers’ empathetic reactions towards a conversational agent JF - Frontiers in Computer Science N2 - Conversational agents and smart speakers have grown in popularity offering a variety of options for use, which are available through intuitive speech operation. In contrast to the standard dyad of a single user and a device, voice-controlled operations can be observed by further attendees resulting in new, more social usage scenarios. Referring to the concept of ‘media equation’ and to research on the idea of ‘computers as social actors,’ which describes the potential of technology to trigger emotional reactions in users, this paper asks for the capacity of smart speakers to elicit empathy in observers of interactions. In a 2 × 2 online experiment, 140 participants watched a video of a man talking to an Amazon Echo either rudely or neutrally (factor 1), addressing it as ‘Alexa’ or ‘Computer’ (factor 2). Controlling for participants’ trait empathy, the rude treatment results in participants’ significantly higher ratings of empathy with the device, compared to the neutral treatment. The form of address had no significant effect. Results were independent of the participants’ gender and usage experience indicating a rather universal effect, which confirms the basic idea of the media equation. Implications for users, developers and researchers were discussed in the light of (future) omnipresent voice-based technology interaction scenarios. KW - conversational agent KW - empathy KW - smart speaker KW - media equation KW - computers as social actors KW - human-computer interaction Y1 - 2021 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-258807 VL - 3 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Wienrich, Carolin A1 - Carolus, Astrid A1 - Markus, André A1 - Augustin, Yannik A1 - Pfister, Jan A1 - Hotho, Andreas T1 - Long-term effects of perceived friendship with intelligent voice assistants on usage behavior, user experience, and social perceptions JF - Computers N2 - Social patterns and roles can develop when users talk to intelligent voice assistants (IVAs) daily. The current study investigates whether users assign different roles to devices and how this affects their usage behavior, user experience, and social perceptions. Since social roles take time to establish, we equipped 106 participants with Alexa or Google assistants and some smart home devices and observed their interactions for nine months. We analyzed diverse subjective (questionnaire) and objective data (interaction data). By combining social science and data science analyses, we identified two distinct clusters—users who assigned a friendship role to IVAs over time and users who did not. Interestingly, these clusters exhibited significant differences in their usage behavior, user experience, and social perceptions of the devices. For example, participants who assigned a role to IVAs attributed more friendship to them used them more frequently, reported more enjoyment during interactions, and perceived more empathy for IVAs. In addition, these users had distinct personal requirements, for example, they reported more loneliness. This study provides valuable insights into the role-specific effects and consequences of voice assistants. Recent developments in conversational language models such as ChatGPT suggest that the findings of this study could make an important contribution to the design of dialogic human–AI interactions. KW - intelligent voice assistant KW - smart speaker KW - social relationship KW - social role KW - long-term analysis KW - social interaction KW - human–computer interaction KW - anthropomorphism Y1 - 2023 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-313552 SN - 2073-431X VL - 12 IS - 4 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Latoschik, Marc Erich A1 - Wienrich, Carolin T1 - Congruence and plausibility, not presence: pivotal conditions for XR experiences and effects, a novel approach JF - Frontiers in Virtual Reality N2 - Presence is often considered the most important quale describing the subjective feeling of being in a computer-generated and/or computer-mediated virtual environment. The identification and separation of orthogonal presence components, i.e., the place illusion and the plausibility illusion, has been an accepted theoretical model describing Virtual Reality (VR) experiences for some time. This perspective article challenges this presence-oriented VR theory. First, we argue that a place illusion cannot be the major construct to describe the much wider scope of virtual, augmented, and mixed reality (VR, AR, MR: or XR for short). Second, we argue that there is no plausibility illusion but merely plausibility, and we derive the place illusion caused by the congruent and plausible generation of spatial cues and similarly for all the current model’s so-defined illusions. Finally, we propose congruence and plausibility to become the central essential conditions in a novel theoretical model describing XR experiences and effects. KW - XR KW - experience KW - presence KW - congruence KW - plausibility KW - coherence KW - theory KW - prediction Y1 - 2022 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-284787 SN - 2673-4192 VL - 3 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Wienrich, Carolin A1 - Carolus, Astrid A1 - Roth-Isigkeit, David A1 - Hotho, Andreas T1 - Inhibitors and enablers to explainable AI success: a systematic examination of explanation complexity and individual characteristics JF - Multimodal Technologies and Interaction N2 - With the increasing adaptability and complexity of advisory artificial intelligence (AI)-based agents, the topics of explainable AI and human-centered AI are moving close together. Variations in the explanation itself have been widely studied, with some contradictory results. These could be due to users’ individual differences, which have rarely been systematically studied regarding their inhibiting or enabling effect on the fulfillment of explanation objectives (such as trust, understanding, or workload). This paper aims to shed light on the significance of human dimensions (gender, age, trust disposition, need for cognition, affinity for technology, self-efficacy, attitudes, and mind attribution) as well as their interplay with different explanation modes (no, simple, or complex explanation). Participants played the game Deal or No Deal while interacting with an AI-based agent. The agent gave advice to the participants on whether they should accept or reject the deals offered to them. As expected, giving an explanation had a positive influence on the explanation objectives. However, the users’ individual characteristics particularly reinforced the fulfillment of the objectives. The strongest predictor of objective fulfillment was the degree of attribution of human characteristics. The more human characteristics were attributed, the more trust was placed in the agent, advice was more likely to be accepted and understood, and important needs were satisfied during the interaction. Thus, the current work contributes to a better understanding of the design of explanations of an AI-based agent system that takes into account individual characteristics and meets the demand for both explainable and human-centered agent systems. KW - explainable AI KW - human-centered AI KW - recommender agent KW - explanation complexity KW - individual differences Y1 - 2022 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-297288 SN - 2414-4088 VL - 6 IS - 12 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Carolus, Astrid A1 - Wienrich, Carolin T1 - “Imagine this smart speaker to have a body”: An analysis of the external appearances and the characteristics that people associate with voice assistants JF - Frontiers in Computer Science N2 - Introduction Modern digital devices, such as conversational agents, simulate human–human interactions to an increasing extent. However, their outward appearance remains distinctly technological. While research revealed that mental representations of technology shape users' expectations and experiences, research on technology sending ambiguous cues is rare. Methods To bridge this gap, this study analyzes drawings of the outward appearance participants associate with voice assistants (Amazon Echo or Google Home). Results Human beings and (humanoid) robots were the most frequent associations, which were rated to be rather trustworthy, conscientious, agreeable, and intelligent. Drawings of the Amazon Echos and Google Homes differed marginally, but “human,” “robotic,” and “other” associations differed with respect to the ascribed humanness, consciousness, intellect, affinity to technology, and innovation ability. Discussion This study aims to further elaborate on the rather unconscious cognitive and emotional processes elicited by technology and discusses the implications of this perspective for developers, users, and researchers. KW - media equation KW - conversational agents KW - smart speakers KW - visualization of technology KW - embodiment Y1 - 2022 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-297175 SN - 2624-9898 VL - 4 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Döllinger, Nina A1 - Wienrich, Carolin A1 - Latoschik, Marc Erich T1 - Challenges and opportunities of immersive technologies for mindfulness meditation: a systematic review JF - Frontiers in Virtual Reality N2 - Mindfulness is considered an important factor of an individual's subjective well-being. Consequently, Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) has investigated approaches that strengthen mindfulness, i.e., by inventing multimedia technologies to support mindfulness meditation. These approaches often use smartphones, tablets, or consumer-grade desktop systems to allow everyday usage in users' private lives or in the scope of organized therapies. Virtual, Augmented, and Mixed Reality (VR, AR, MR; in short: XR) significantly extend the design space for such approaches. XR covers a wide range of potential sensory stimulation, perceptive and cognitive manipulations, content presentation, interaction, and agency. These facilities are linked to typical XR-specific perceptions that are conceptually closely related to mindfulness research, such as (virtual) presence and (virtual) embodiment. However, a successful exploitation of XR that strengthens mindfulness requires a systematic analysis of the potential interrelation and influencing mechanisms between XR technology, its properties, factors, and phenomena and existing models and theories of the construct of mindfulness. This article reports such a systematic analysis of XR-related research from HCI and life sciences to determine the extent to which existing research frameworks on HCI and mindfulness can be applied to XR technologies, the potential of XR technologies to support mindfulness, and open research gaps. Fifty papers of ACM Digital Library and National Institutes of Health's National Library of Medicine (PubMed) with and without empirical efficacy evaluation were included in our analysis. The results reveal that at the current time, empirical research on XR-based mindfulness support mainly focuses on therapy and therapeutic outcomes. Furthermore, most of the currently investigated XR-supported mindfulness interactions are limited to vocally guided meditations within nature-inspired virtual environments. While an analysis of empirical research on those systems did not reveal differences in mindfulness compared to non-mediated mindfulness practices, various design proposals illustrate that XR has the potential to provide interactive and body-based innovations for mindfulness practice. We propose a structured approach for future work to specify and further explore the potential of XR as mindfulness-support. The resulting framework provides design guidelines for XR-based mindfulness support based on the elements and psychological mechanisms of XR interactions. KW - virtual reality KW - augmented reality KW - mindfulness KW - XR KW - meditation Y1 - 2021 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-259047 VL - 2 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Hein, Rebecca M. A1 - Latoschik, Marc Erich A1 - Wienrich, Carolin T1 - Inter- and transcultural learning in cocial virtual reality: a proposal for an inter- and transcultural virtual object database to be used in the implementation, reflection, and evaluation of virtual encounters JF - Multimodal Technologies and Interaction N2 - Visual stimuli are frequently used to improve memory, language learning or perception, and understanding of metacognitive processes. However, in virtual reality (VR), there are few systematically and empirically derived databases. This paper proposes the first collection of virtual objects based on empirical evaluation for inter-and transcultural encounters between English- and German-speaking learners. We used explicit and implicit measurement methods to identify cultural associations and the degree of stereotypical perception for each virtual stimuli (n = 293) through two online studies, including native German and English-speaking participants. The analysis resulted in a final well-describable database of 128 objects (called InteractionSuitcase). In future applications, the objects can be used as a great interaction or conversation asset and behavioral measurement tool in social VR applications, especially in the field of foreign language education. For example, encounters can use the objects to describe their culture, or teachers can intuitively assess stereotyped attitudes of the encounters. KW - virtual stimuli KW - implicit association test KW - virtual reality KW - social VR KW - InteractionSuitcase Y1 - 2022 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-278974 SN - 2414-4088 VL - 6 IS - 7 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Wolf, Erik A1 - Döllinger, Nina A1 - Mal, David A1 - Wenninger, Stephan A1 - Bartl, Andrea A1 - Botsch, Mario A1 - Latoschik, Marc Erich A1 - Wienrich, Carolin T1 - Does distance matter? Embodiment and perception of personalized avatars in relation to the self-observation distance in virtual reality JF - Frontiers in Virtual Reality N2 - Virtual reality applications employing avatar embodiment typically use virtual mirrors to allow users to perceive their digital selves not only from a first-person but also from a holistic third-person perspective. However, due to distance-related biases such as the distance compression effect or a reduced relative rendering resolution, the self-observation distance (SOD) between the user and the virtual mirror might influence how users perceive their embodied avatar. Our article systematically investigates the effects of a short (1 m), middle (2.5 m), and far (4 m) SOD between users and mirror on the perception of their personalized and self-embodied avatars. The avatars were photorealistic reconstructed using state-of-the-art photogrammetric methods. Thirty participants repeatedly faced their real-time animated self-embodied avatars in each of the three SOD conditions, where they were repeatedly altered in their body weight, and participants rated the 1) sense of embodiment, 2) body weight perception, and 3) affective appraisal towards their avatar. We found that the different SODs are unlikely to influence any of our measures except for the perceived body weight estimation difficulty. Here, the participants perceived the difficulty significantly higher for the farthest SOD. We further found that the participants’ self-esteem significantly impacted their ability to modify their avatar’s body weight to their current body weight and that it positively correlated with the perceived attractiveness of the avatar. Additionally, the participants’ concerns about their body shape affected how eerie they perceived their avatars. The participants’ self-esteem and concerns about their body shape influenced the perceived body weight estimation difficulty. We conclude that the virtual mirror in embodiment scenarios can be freely placed and varied at a distance of one to four meters from the user without expecting major effects on the perception of the avatar. KW - virtual human KW - virtual body ownership KW - agency KW - body image distortion KW - body weight perception KW - body weight modification KW - affective appraisal KW - distance compression Y1 - 2022 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-299415 SN - 2673-4192 VL - 3 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Wienrich, Carolin A1 - Latoschik, Marc Erich T1 - eXtended Artificial Intelligence: New Prospects of Human-AI Interaction Research JF - Frontiers in Virtual Reality N2 - Artificial Intelligence (AI) covers a broad spectrum of computational problems and use cases. Many of those implicate profound and sometimes intricate questions of how humans interact or should interact with AIs. Moreover, many users or future users do have abstract ideas of what AI is, significantly depending on the specific embodiment of AI applications. Human-centered-design approaches would suggest evaluating the impact of different embodiments on human perception of and interaction with AI. An approach that is difficult to realize due to the sheer complexity of application fields and embodiments in reality. However, here XR opens new possibilities to research human-AI interactions. The article’s contribution is twofold: First, it provides a theoretical treatment and model of human-AI interaction based on an XR-AI continuum as a framework for and a perspective of different approaches of XR-AI combinations. It motivates XR-AI combinations as a method to learn about the effects of prospective human-AI interfaces and shows why the combination of XR and AI fruitfully contributes to a valid and systematic investigation of human-AI interactions and interfaces. Second, the article provides two exemplary experiments investigating the aforementioned approach for two distinct AI-systems. The first experiment reveals an interesting gender effect in human-robot interaction, while the second experiment reveals an Eliza effect of a recommender system. Here the article introduces two paradigmatic implementations of the proposed XR testbed for human-AI interactions and interfaces and shows how a valid and systematic investigation can be conducted. In sum, the article opens new perspectives on how XR benefits human-centered AI design and development. KW - human-artificial intelligence interface KW - human-artificial intelligence interaction KW - XR-artificial intelligence continuum KW - XR-artificial intelligence combination KW - research methods KW - human-centered, human-robot KW - recommender system Y1 - 2021 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-260296 VL - 2 ER -