Mutual Stance Building in Dyad of Virtual Agents: Smile Alignment and Synchronisation

When we consider communication, the "interactivenature of dialog supports interactive alignment of linguistic representations" [1]. However, verbal communication cannot be reduced to speech. Non-verbal behaviours (NVBs) of interactantsare also taking part in interactive alignment. Based on NVBs alignment, this paper proposes a model of mutual building of stance between virtual agents. In this model, we focus on the the social signal of smile. Indeed, smiles are particular non-verbal markers of agents' stances: their characteristics in terms of facial and dynamical patterns leads to discriminate stances as for instance politeness or amusement. We propose a model combining alignment of types of smile and alignement of timing of smiles (synchronisation). This model enables a dyad of agents to mutually build a common stance, to align on a shared social stance.