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The Impact of Virtual Reality in the Social Presence of a Virtual Agent

In this work we test the hypothesis that interacting with an intelligent virtual character in Virtual Reality (VR) has a stronger impact compared to the same interaction in a traditional non-immersive platform, both in terms of presence and believability. We designed a Social Skills Training scenario of a police interview, based on interactions observed in real cases with the help of teachers and experts from that field. To test our hypothesis, we conducted experiments with two treatments: one in VR and the other displayed on a conventional computer screen. We collected qualitative and quantitative data using instruments with elements from well-established presence and situated interaction questionnaires. Results indicate that participant perception of social presence of virtual characters is higher in VR. No significant difference in believability was observed across treatments The experimental design encourages further work on measurement of effects of social presence and its impact on design of intelligent interactions in the context of Social Skills Training environments and immersive platforms.