Du, Haoyang, Chhatre, Kiran, Peters, Christopher, Keegan, Brian, McConnell, Rachel and Ennis, Cathy (2025) Synthetically Expressive: Evaluating gesture and voice for emotion and empathy in VR and 2D scenarios. Proceedings of the 25th ACM International Conference on Intelligent Virtual Agents. pp. 1-10.
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Abstract
The creation of virtual humans increasingly leverages automated synthesis of speech and gestures, enabling expressive, adaptable agents that effectively engage users. However, the independent development of voice and gesture generation technologies, alongside the growing popularity of virtual reality (VR), presents significant questions about the integration of these signals and their ability to convey emotional detail in immersive environments. In this paper, we evaluate the influence of real and synthetic gestures and speech, alongside varying levels of immersion (VR vs. 2D displays) and emotional contexts (positive, neutral, negative) on user perceptions. We investigate how immersion affects the perceived match between gestures and speech and the impact on key aspects of user experience, including emotional and empathetic responses and the sense of co-presence. Our findings indicate that while VR enhances the perception of natural gesture-voice pairings, it does not similarly improve synthetic ones - amplifying the perceptual gap between them. These results highlight the need to reassess gesture appropriateness and refine AI-driven synthesis for immersive environments.
| Item Type: | Article |
|---|---|
| Keywords: | ML for animation; Speech synthesis; User studies; Perception in VR; |
| Academic Unit: | Faculty of Science & Engineering > Computer Science Faculty of Science & Engineering > Research Institutes > Hamilton Institute |
| Item ID: | 22027 |
| Identification Number: | 10.1145/3717511.3747074 |
| Depositing User: | Vidatum Academic |
| Date Deposited: | 04 Nov 2026 16:48 |
| Journal or Publication Title: | Proceedings of the 25th ACM International Conference on Intelligent Virtual Agents |
| Publisher: | Association for Computing Machinery |
| Refereed: | Yes |
| Related URLs: | |
| Use Licence: | This item is available under a Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial Share Alike Licence (CC BY-NC-SA). Details of this licence are available here |
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