Culturally Aware Agent Communication

Agent based interaction in the form of Embodied Conversational Agents (ECAs) has matured over the last decade and agents have become more and more sophisticated in terms of their verbal and nonverbal behavior like facial expressions or gestures. Having such “natural” communication channels available for expressing not only task-relevant but also socially and psychologically relevant information makes it necessary to take influences into account that are not readily implemented like emotions or cultural heuristics. These influences have a huge impact on the success of an interaction but are often neither consciously generated nor interpreted. In this chapter, we focus on culture as a parameter for successful agent interactions and start with an attempt of grasping what is meant by this multiply defined notion. For the remainder of the chapter, we analyze in detail how culture influences the expression of multimodal behavior in agents.