Haman and Virtual Agent Expressive Gesture Quality Analysis and Synthesis
Radosław Niewiadomski, Maurizio Mancini, Stefano Piana · 2013
When we are face to face with others, we use not only speech, but also a multitude of nonverbal behaviors to communicate with each other. A head nod expresses accordance with what someone else said before. A facial expression like a frown indicates doubts or misgivings about what one is hearing or seeing. A pointing gesture is used to refer to something. More complex movements or configurations of the hands depict the shape or size of an object. Of all these nonverbal behaviors, gestures, the spontaneous and meaningful hand motions that accompany speech, stand out as they are very closely linked to the semantic content of the speech they accompany, in both form and timing. Speech and gesture together comprise an utterance and externalize thought; they are believed to emerge from the same underlying cognitive representation and to be governed, at least in part, by the same cognitive processes (Kendon, 2004; McNeill, 2005).