while the female participants rated the same condition
as least tolerant in all conditions.
The results suggest interesting gender differences
in perceiving the feminine self-adaptors. The
Japanese male participants are in favour of the
feminine self-adaptors, while the Japanese female
participants have rigorous impression on them when
they are performed by the female agent, without
noticing the difference as all conditions are rated as
equally natural. This suggest there is a dichotomy
between participants’ gender in the perception of
combination of self-adaptor and agent’s gender.
This research is still at a starting phase, thus has
several limitations. Firstly, we need to conduct more
fine grained study on the self-adaptor in human-
human interactions. Extraction of self-adaptors was
made from the video recordings of only 20
participants, who are undergraduate students in Japan.
The evaluations of self-adaptor performing agents
were made by 29 Japanese undergraduate students
(different subjects from those who were videotaped).
Given the enormous inter-subjective variability in
gesture use, we need to conduct close observations on
the form and movements of self-adaptors with larger
samples with wider age range and cultures.
Secondly, although we compared only
masculine/feminine self-adaptors in this experiment,
we need to compare impressions with non-self-
adaptor condition in order to evaluate the masculinity
and feminity of the self-adaptors solely.
Thirdly, future work should also consider cultural
diversity in expressing and perceiving self-adaptors.
There are culturally-defined preferences in bodily
expressions (Johnson, 2004, Rehm, 2007, Rehm,
2008, Aylett, 2009) and in facial expressions (Koda,
2009, Rehm, 2010), and allowance level of
expressing non-verbal behaviour are culture-
dependant. Japanese male tend to perform self-
adaptors around their nose and chin more frequently
than other cultures by observation, and Japanese
female tend to cover their mouth while talking, which
is considered as typical Japanese female self-adaptor.
We will investigate culture specific self-adaptors
from video recordings of human-human interactions
from other cultures. Furthermore, we will implement
them with agents, and conduct a cross-cultural
evaluation study.
6 CONCLUSIONS
Our evaluation of the interactions between the agents
that exhibit self-adaptors typically exhibited by
Japanese male and female indicated that there is a
dichotomy on the impression on the agent between
participants’ gender. Japanese male participants
showed more favourable impressions on agents that
display feminine self-adaptors than masculine ones
performed by the female agent, while Japanese
female participants showed rigorous impressions
toward feminine self-adaptors. These results implies
the importance of considering the use of self-adaptors
and gender in successful human-agent interactions.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
This research is partially supported by a Grant-in-Aid
for Scientific Research (C) 26330236) (2014-2016)
from the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science.
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