Leon Kroczek

#wuertual25 just started!
Looking forward to an interesting and inspiring 3 days ahead 🚀

Affective interactions with AI controlled conversational agents in Virtual Reality | Adjunct Proceedings of the 25th ACM International Conference on Intelligent Virtual Agents

It was fun to join @acm-iva.bsky.social for a workshop this year!

If you are interested in #AI embodied conversational agents and #emotions in #VR check out our paper:

dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/...

Frontiers | AffectTracker: real-time continuous rating of affective experience in immersive virtual reality Subjective experience is key to understanding affective states, characterized by valence and arousal. Traditional experiments using post-stimulus summary rat...

📢Our peer-reviewed article about the AffectTracker is finally out! 😲🕹️📈
Traditional methods for rating emotion often miss the dynamic, moment-to-moment nature of feelings. We designed a tool to capture this continuous affective experience in real-time during dynamic emotional stimulation.

Virtual reality in cognitive and affective neuroscience Technological advances are making the use of virtual reality (VR) easier and more affordable for many research institutions. Such applications allow f…

Interested in VR research? @martandreatta.bsky.social and me edited a special issue on "Virtual reality in cognitive and affective neuroscience" for Behavioural Brain Research. Read the editorial here www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Besides replicating our previous study doi.org/10.1016/j.bi...
, we also made an interesting observation:

When sending an emoji per button press we found an increase in EMG activity in the corresponding facial muscle

😀 -> M. Zygomatiucs
😠 -> M- Corrugator

This work originated in a undergrad course on experimental psychology. I'm super proud of my students (and now co-authors) who continued to work on this with me - even when the course was long over

<em>Psychophysiology</em> | SPR Journal | Wiley Online Library Communicating emotional intentions via emojis influences how people evaluate and mimic facial expressions during social interactions. Sending a smile emoji increased pleasantness and mimicry of happy...

Check out our new paper on communicative intentions in social interactions!

Sending emojis 😀/😐/😠 to a virtual agent modulated mimicry and evaluation of a facial expression received in response!

doi.org/10.1111/psyp...

@biodgps-dgpa.bsky.social @therealspr.bsky.social

I've said it before, and I will say it again:

It's astonishing how emotionally aversive revisions are, even in the best possible case (reviewers are positive and have very actionable remarks).

Or at least that's how I work; if anybody has some good recommendations for coping, do let me know 😂

But the personas also influenced participants' behavior Participants also talked more when conversing with teh extraverted vs. introverted agents

Interestingly, the two personas changed how participants evaluated the virtual agent: The extraverted model was rated as more pleasant.

The LLM was prompted to be either extraverted and talkative or introverted and less talkative.

Using the NEO-FFI as a manipulation check confirmed these differences. The extraverted model also produced more words

We used #embodied #conversational #agents in #VirtualReality.

By combining speech2text, speech-synthesis, and lip-synced animations for #Metahumans our participants engaged in real-time conversations with a virtual human

Our paper on persona effects in face-to-face social interactions between humans and #LLM-controlled virtual agents is now published in Computers in Human Behavior!
🗣️🤖

doi.org/10.1016/j.ch...

#VirtualReality
#SocialInteraction #Human-AI #HCI #LLM

#VRresearch

If you‘re working with XR in the context of research and happen to be at #PuG2025 – I suggest you drop by at my poster about our EDIA toolbox @ediatoolbox.bsky.social .
Let’s chat, connect, collaborate. Not in the area? Check out the poster below and reach out digitally: edia-toolbox.github.io

It was really fun! Thanks to all contributors

I might be biased, but what an inspiring #VR symposium at #PuG25 🤩
This field still develops so fast 🚀as showcased by the integration of neurophysiology, multi-user settings and clinical application.
Thanks to @martandreatta.bsky.social, @leonkroczek.bsky.social, @michaelgaebler.com and Marius Rubo!

New preprint!

Here we investigate sustained threat responses elicited by social contexts in #VirtualReality looking at:

🧠🌊 Neural Oscillations
🔊Fear potentiated startle
💦 SCL
🗓️Self-report

All measures show successful fear learning by social contexts ✅

Neural and Affective Dynamics of Social Context Conditioning in Virtual Reality: https://osf.io/sftu3

www.pug2025.org/sessions/the...

Excited about all #PUG25 @biodgps-dgpa.bsky.social posts coming in!

Check out our symposium "The Best of Both Worlds? Bridging Behavior and Physiology Using Immersive #VirtualReality"
🗓️Friday 14:30-16:00

@sabrinagado.bsky.social
@michaelgaebler.com
Marius Rubo
@martandreatta.bsky.social

Our team is excited to be part of @pug2025.bsky.social by@biodgps-dgpa.bsky.social and @dgps.bsky.social in Würzburg this week! Please reach out and approach us if you want to chat or meet! We look forward to an inspiring conference! ✨

News entry with list of our contributions: tud.link/39nus1

Last pre-PuG rehearsal with critical mock audience 😄

Now fully prepared for our symposium on Friday ⬇️

#PuG2025

We are excited to be headed to Würzburg for "Psychologie und Gehirn" #PuG2025! Follow along for updates and behind-the-scenes from the MBE group 📣

Curious to know what we'll present? Open the thread below for when and where to find us 👇

@biodgps-dgpa.bsky.social @pug2025.bsky.social

IGOR is going to #PuG2025 in Würzburg! 🧠
@pug2025.bsky.social

We’re bringing open science to the spotlight with a series of events throughout the conference. Come meet us, discover our latest work, and get involved!

🧵 Check the thread below for all IGOR events. [1/6]

Speaking of modeling the variability in reactions -- new Multi-modal Multiple Appropriate Reaction in Social Dyads (MARS) challenge. Human-human dyadic interaction audio-visual-EEG clips of 23 speakers and 137 listeners. Audio, face, and EEG behaviours, 20 to 35min
sites.google.com/view/react2025

Impact of Visual Virtual Scene and Localization Task on Auditory Distance Perception in Virtual Reality Investigating auditory perception and cognition in realistic, controlled environments is made possible by virtual reality (VR). However, when visual information is presented, sound localization result...

New research on auditory distance perception in #VR

We investigated effects of different visual environments and localization tasks

doi.org/10.1109/TVCG...

Work lead by Sarah Roßkopf (not on bsky)

#VirtualReality #AuditoryPerception #MultisensoryIntegration #IEEE

Our social conditioning #VR study is now published in Behavior Research Methods: doi.org/10.3758/s134...
More exiting projects with this paradigm soon to come #staytuned 😊

🏆 Research integrity consultant and image forensics expert @elisabethbik.bsky.social has uncovered fraudulent data in over 7,600 scientific papers and exposed the practices of ‘paper mills’ that produce counterfeit scientific articles. She is honoured with the €200K Individual Award. Congrats!

👍