from: http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20627555.600-avatars-cant-hide-your-lyi...
"ARE you being lied to online? Spotting when someone is telling the truth could soon become easier, thanks to avatars that can mimic our real-world eye movements.Most virtual worlds, such as Second Life, are populated by avatars with static or pre-programmed gazes. One way to make interactions feel more realistic is to reproduce a person's eye movement on their avatar, say William Steptoe of University College London and colleagues. Now they have found this makes it easier to spot whether an avatar is telling the truth.The researchers asked 11 volunteers personal questions, such as to name their favourite book, and told them to lie in some of their answers. During the interviews, the volunteers wore eye-tracking glasses that recorded their blink rate, direction and length of gaze, and pupil dilation.A second group of 27 people then watched a selection of clips of avatars as they delivered the first group's answers. Some avatars had eye movements that mirrored those of the original volunteers, while others had no eye movement at all. The volunteers were asked whether they believed the avatars were being truthful or lying.On average, the participants were able to identify 88 per cent of truths correctly when the avatars had eye movement, but only 70 per cent without. Spotting lies was harder, but eye movement helped: 48 per cent accuracy compared with 39 per cent without. Steptoe will present the results at the 2010 Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems in Atlanta, Georgia, next week.It is unclear exactly how the eye movements help. The eye-tracking glasses did show that people tended to hold the gaze of the interviewer for longer when telling the truth than when lying. "Perhaps they were overcompensating," says Steptoe. What's more, their pupils dilated more when lying - something previous studies have linked with the greater cognitive load required for deception. "This is one of a small handful of cues that you can't control," says Steptoe.Enhancing expressive features such as eye movement could eventually make avatar-mediated communication feel more trustworthy than online video, because only relevant visual cues need to be displayed, says Steptoe. "This means you can emphasise certain behaviours."The technology could help in business meetings held in virtual environments, or to enhance communication between people with social phobias, where face-to-face interaction can seem daunting, says Steptoe.Ralph Schroeder of the University of Oxford says the work is "a big step forward" in virtual communication. This work is "unique in showing that if you give an avatar eyes that blink and move, people will treat them in a highly real way", he says."
"ARE you being lied to online? Spotting when someone is telling the truth could soon become easier, thanks to avatars that can mimic our real-world eye movements.Most virtual worlds, such as Second Life, are populated by avatars with static or pre-programmed gazes. One way to make interactions feel more realistic is to reproduce a person's eye movement on their avatar, say William Steptoe of University College London and colleagues. Now they have found this makes it easier to spot whether an avatar is telling the truth.The researchers asked 11 volunteers personal questions, such as to name their favourite book, and told them to lie in some of their answers. During the interviews, the volunteers wore eye-tracking glasses that recorded their blink rate, direction and length of gaze, and pupil dilation.A second group of 27 people then watched a selection of clips of avatars as they delivered the first group's answers. Some avatars had eye movements that mirrored those of the original volunteers, while others had no eye movement at all. The volunteers were asked whether they believed the avatars were being truthful or lying.On average, the participants were able to identify 88 per cent of truths correctly when the avatars had eye movement, but only 70 per cent without. Spotting lies was harder, but eye movement helped: 48 per cent accuracy compared with 39 per cent without. Steptoe will present the results at the 2010 Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems in Atlanta, Georgia, next week.It is unclear exactly how the eye movements help. The eye-tracking glasses did show that people tended to hold the gaze of the interviewer for longer when telling the truth than when lying. "Perhaps they were overcompensating," says Steptoe. What's more, their pupils dilated more when lying - something previous studies have linked with the greater cognitive load required for deception. "This is one of a small handful of cues that you can't control," says Steptoe.Enhancing expressive features such as eye movement could eventually make avatar-mediated communication feel more trustworthy than online video, because only relevant visual cues need to be displayed, says Steptoe. "This means you can emphasise certain behaviours."The technology could help in business meetings held in virtual environments, or to enhance communication between people with social phobias, where face-to-face interaction can seem daunting, says Steptoe.Ralph Schroeder of the University of Oxford says the work is "a big step forward" in virtual communication. This work is "unique in showing that if you give an avatar eyes that blink and move, people will treat them in a highly real way", he says."
No comments:
Post a Comment