Leon O. H. Kroczek | Searcharxiv

arXiv2026

Interactive Communication -- cross-disciplinary perspectives from psychology, acoustics, and technology

Interactive communication (IC), i.e., the reciprocal exchange of information between two or more interactive partners, is a fundamental part of human nature. As such, it has been studied across multiple scientific disciplines with different goals and methods. This article provides a cross-disciplinary and selective primer on contemporary IC integrating psychological mechanisms with speech signal, acoustic and media-technological constraints in theory, measurement, and applications. First, we outline theoretical frameworks that account for verbal, nonverbal, and multimodal aspects of IC, including distinctions between face-to-face and computer-mediated communication. Second, we summarize key methodological approaches, including behavioral, cognitive, and experiential measures of communicative synchrony and acoustic signal quality. Third, we discuss selected applications, applications in which speech transmission, signal enhancement, mediated dialogue, and real-time coordination are central, namely assistive listening technologies, conversational agents, and social VR, alongside ethical considerations. Taken together, this primer highlights how human capacities and technical systems jointly shape IC, consolidating concepts, findings, and challenges that have often been discussed in separate lines of research.

cs.HC↗

arXiv2024

The influence of persona and conversational task on social interactions with a LLM-controlled embodied conversational agent

Large Language Models (LLMs) have demonstrated remarkable capabilities in conversational tasks. Embodying an LLM as a virtual human allows users to engage in face-to-face social interactions in Virtual Reality. However, the influence of person- and task-related factors in social interactions with LLM-controlled agents remains unclear. In this study, forty-six participants interacted with a virtual agent whose persona was manipulated as extravert or introvert in three different conversational tasks (small talk, knowledge test, convincing). Social-evaluation, emotional experience, and realism were assessed using ratings. Interactive engagement was measured by quantifying participants' words and conversational turns. Finally, we measured participants' willingness to ask the agent for help during the knowledge test. Our findings show that the extraverted agent was more positively evaluated, elicited a more pleasant experience and greater engagement, and was assessed as more realistic compared to the introverted agent. Whereas persona did not affect the tendency to ask for help, participants were generally more confident in the answer when they had help of the LLM. Variation of personality traits of LLM-controlled embodied virtual agents, therefore, affects social-emotional processing and behavior in virtual interactions. Embodied virtual agents allow the presentation of naturalistic social encounters in a virtual environment.

cs.HC↗