Related papers: Haptic Empathy: Investigating Individual Differenc…
Affective tactile interaction constitutes a fundamental component of human communication. In natural human-human encounters, touch is seldom experienced in isolation; rather, it is inherently multisensory. Individuals not only perceive the…
Affective interaction is not merely about recognizing emotions; it is an embodied, situated process shaped by context and co-created through interaction. In affective computing, the role of haptic feedback within dynamic emotional exchanges…
As artificial intelligence (AI) systems become increasingly embedded in everyday life, the ability of interactive agents to express empathy has become critical for effective human-AI interaction, particularly in emotionally sensitive…
Inter-personal touch is a powerful aspect of social interaction that we expect to be particularly important for emotional communication. We studied the capacity of closely acquainted humans to signal the meaning of several word cues (e.g.…
Social interactions promote well-being, yet barriers like geographic distance, time limitations, and mental health conditions can limit face-to-face interactions. Emotionally responsive AI systems, such as chatbots, offer new opportunities…
Digital communication tools are limited to visual and auditory information and lack non-verbal information such as touch, which is important for communicating intentions and emotions. In order to solve this problem, the use of haptic…
The rise of AI conversational agents has broadened opportunities to enhance human capabilities across various domains. As these agents become more prevalent, it is crucial to investigate the impact of different affective abilities on their…
Understanding speaker's feelings and producing appropriate responses with emotion connection is a key communicative skill for empathetic dialogue systems. In this paper, we propose a simple technique called Affective Decoding for empathetic…
The EMPATHIC project aimed to design an emotionally expressive virtual coach capable of engaging healthy seniors to improve well-being and promote independent aging. One of the core aspects of the system is its human sensing capabilities,…
Designing and displaying haptic signals with sensory and emotional attributes can improve the user experience in various applications. Free-form user language provides rich sensory and emotional information for haptic design (e.g., ``This…
Empathy indicates an individual's ability to understand others. Over the past few years, empathy has drawn attention from various disciplines, including but not limited to Affective Computing, Cognitive Science, and Psychology. Detecting…
We routinely communicate distinct social and emotional sentiments through nuanced touch. For example, we might gently hold another's arm to offer a sense of calm, yet intensively hold another's arm to express excitement or anxiety. As this…
Empathy is often understood as the ability to share and understand another individual's state of mind or emotion. With the increasing use of chatbots in various domains, e.g., children seeking help with homework, individuals looking for…
Empathy is a cognitive and emotional reaction to an observed situation of others. Empathy has recently attracted interest because it has numerous applications in psychology and AI, but it is unclear how different forms of empathy (e.g.,…
Conversational agents (CAs) are increasingly embedded in daily life, yet their ability to navigate user emotions efficiently is still evolving. This study investigates how users with varying traits -- gender, personality, and cultural…
Social touch is essential for our social interactions, communication, and well-being. It has been shown to reduce anxiety and loneliness; and is a key channel to transmit emotions for which words are not sufficient, such as love, sympathy,…
Empathetic response generation aims to comprehend the user emotion and then respond to it appropriately. Most existing works merely focus on what the emotion is and ignore how the emotion is evoked, thus weakening the capacity of the model…
During social interactions, people use auditory, visual, and haptic cues to convey their thoughts, emotions, and intentions. Due to weight, energy, and other hardware constraints, it is difficult to create devices that completely capture…
Emotion recognition has the potential to play a pivotal role in enhancing human-computer interaction by enabling systems to accurately interpret and respond to human affect. Yet, capturing emotions in face-to-face contexts remains…
A natural conversational interface that allows longitudinal symptom tracking would be extremely valuable in health/wellness applications. However, the task of designing emotionally-aware agents for behavior change is still poorly…