The body shapes the mind: bodily representations structure the way humans perceive the world and the way they perceive other people. Cognitive sciences and social sciences altogether have stressed the importance of embodiment in social interaction, highlighting how interacting with others influences how we behave, perceive and think. As the sense of embodiment can be defined as the ensemble of sensations that arise in conjunction with being inside, having, and controlling a body, it definitely influences self-perceptions and actions regarding one's own avatar, but also our social behaviours with embodied intelligent agents such as virtual humans and robots.

The topic is multidisciplinary by nature: embodiment can affect both human-human and human-agent (either virtual or robotic) interactions and this influence can arise through different sensory modalities. For instance, in virtual environments, users may experience what is known as the Proteus effect, a well-known phenomenon where the appearance of users' avatars influence their behaviour, but whose underlying cognitive processes are still not clear. In human-robot and human-agent interactions, the level of anthropomorphism can impact human reactions and behaviours during the interaction (e.g., uncanny valley of visual appearance or motions that disturb responses and sense of presence in virtual reality). These phenomena are not only of interest for the design of artificial characters, either virtual or robotic, but could also help to shed light on social behaviour and cognition, providing new tools and experimental perspectives.

The ACE workshop aims to bring together researchers, practitioners and experts on the topic of embodiment, to analyse and foster discussion on its effects on user behaviour in multi-modal interaction contexts. Objectives are to stimulate multidisciplinary discussions on the topic, to share recent progress, and to provide participants with a forum to debate current and future challenges. Contributions from computational, neuroscientific and psychological perspectives, as well as technical applications, will be welcome. Domna Banakou will present her work and most recent studies as a keynote speaker, as well as Alessandra Sciutti.