Varying Personality in Spoken Dialogue with a Virtual Human

This poster reports the results of two experiments to test a personality framework for virtual characters. We use the Tactical Questioning dialogue system architecture (TACQ) [1] as a testbed for this effort. Characters built using the TACQ architecture can be used by trainees to practice their questioning skills by engaging in a role-play with a virtual human. The architecture supports advanced behavior in a questioning setting, including deceptive behavior, simple negotiations about whether to answer, tracking subdialogues for offers/threats, grounding behavior, and maintenance of the affective state of the virtual human. Trainees can use different questioning tactics in their sessions. In order for the questioning training to be effective, trainees should have experience of interacting with virtual humans with different personalities, who react in different ways to the same questioning tactics.