PT Journal
AU Maria Elena Meza-de-Luna
   Juan Ramon Terven Salinas
   Bogdan Raducanu
   Joaquin Salas
TI Assessing the Influence of Mirroring on the Perception of Professional Competence using Wearable Technology
SO IEEE Transactions on Affective Computing
JI TAC
PY 2016
BP 161
EP 175
VL 9
IS 2
DI 10.1109/TAFFC.2016.2606594
DE Mirroring; Nodding; Competence; Perception; Wearable Technology
AB Nonverbal communication is an intrinsic part in daily face-to-face meetings. A frequently observed behavior during social interactions is mirroring, in which one person tends to mimic the attitude of the counterpart. This paper shows that a computer vision system could be used to predict the perception of competence in dyadic interactions through the automatic detection of mirroringevents. To prove our hypothesis, we developed: (1) A social assistant for mirroring detection, using a wearable device which includes a video camera and (2) an automatic classifier for the perception of competence, using the number of nodding gestures and mirroring events as predictors. For our study, we used a mixed-method approach in an experimental design where 48 participants acting as customers interacted with a confederated psychologist. We found that the number of nods or mirroring events has a significant influence on the perception of competence. Our results suggest that: (1) Customer mirroring is a better predictor than psychologist mirroring; (2) the number of psychologist’s nods is a better predictor than the number of customer’s nods; (3) except for the psychologist mirroring, the computer vision algorithm we used worked about equally well whether it was acquiring images from wearable smartglasses or fixed cameras.
ER