SpeakInVR : validation of a virtual audience

Introduction/Context:
Nowadays public speaking is a vital skill in many circumstances and in very different fields: the sales representative who presents a product to customers, the manager who defends his project in front of stakeholders, the candidate during a job interview, the professor in front of students, etc. However, social anxiety may impede oral presentation performances . Repeated training in front of an audience can help to better control the speaker’s emotions and skills, and improve speaking performances (Wallach et al., 2009). Given that training in front of a real audience can be logistically difficult to organize, virtual reality (VR) can be the solution. Nevertheless, the emotional impact of the virtual audience on the speaker will depend on the emotional valence and arousal they attribute to the audience’s avatars.

Aim:
The goal of the present study is to assess the emotional valence and arousal attributed to the avatars of a new virtual audience, depending on the avatars’ attitude.

Method and material:
Based on the methods from Chollet & Scherer (2017), 125 adults participated in this study. They rated the emotional valence and arousal of 8 avatars depending on their body posture, their face’s expressions, or their head movements.

Results and conclusions:
Results show that head movements were more readily linked to the emotional valence attributed to the avatars by the participants than were body postures and facial expressions. Furthermore, arousal seems to be directly linked with head movements and facial expressions. Full results from each parameter will be discussed.