Investigating an Interactive Computational Framework for Nonverbal Interpersonal Skills Training

Investigating an Interactive Computational Framework for Nonverbal Interpersonal Skills Training

Interpersonal skills such as public speaking are essential assets for a large variety of professions and in everyday life. The ability to communicate in social environments often greatly influences a person’s career development, can help build relationships and resolve conflict, or even gain the upper hand in negotiations. The goal of this project is to create the computational foundations to automatically assesses interpersonal skill expertise and help people improve their skills using an interactive virtual human framework. This will be achieved by developing and evaluating a multimodal virtual human based computational framework specifically targeted to improve public speaking performance through repeated training interactions with a virtual audience that perceives the speaker and produces nonverbal feedback.