Call for Submissions

Social interaction is at the core of being human, but the scientific study of social interaction is challenging. We have only a limited understanding of the behavioral patterns and the brain and cognitive mechanisms which allow interactions. New technologies like Virtual Reality, motion tracking, virtual humans and 3D avatars, can help us probe and measure human social behaviour without sacrificing the validity of the interaction. The data we gain allows us to develop and test new theories and models of the neurocognitive mechanisms underlying human sociality.

This interdisciplinary workshop will highlight new methods and new theories in the domain of social interaction, with a focus on the potential of VR and AI technology, and work towards a scientific understanding of how people interact. It aims to bring together researchers from Psychology, Cognitive Science, Computer Science (VR, AI, HCI), Neuroscience, clinical fields and other related areas. It is the third after two successful preceding events held at UCL (London, 2014) and at the University of Salford (Manchester, 2016).

The workshop program will feature invited keynotes by outstanding researchers, as well as presentations of submitted and refereed research work by the participants. It is in particular meant to provide an opportunity to discuss exciting current and ongoing work.

Confirmed keynotes

- Gerard Pons-Moll (MPI Intelligent Systems): Real virtual humans

- Andreas Mühlberger (U. Regensburg): VR in clinical Psychology and Psychotherapy

- Catherine Pelachaud (CNRS, UPMC Paris): Socio-emotional conversational agents

- Jari Hietanen (U. Tampere): Cognitive and neural mechanisms of social information processing

Important Dates

Submission: April 20, 2017 *** Extended deadline *** May 2, 2017

Notification: May 11, 2017 *** Delayed *** May 25, 2017

Camera Ready: June 20, 2017

Registration: June 13, 2017

Conference Date: July 6 & 7, 2017

Submission Details

We invite extended abstract submissions (up to 3 pages, single column, font size 10pt). Submissions will be reviewed and selected based on relevance, originality and soundness. Accepted submissions will be presented (orally) at the workshop and will be published on the workshop website.

Submissions can be sent to vsi2017@techfak.uni-bielefeld.de by April 20th, 2017 *** Extended *** May 2, 2017 in PDF form.

Topics of interest include, but are (really) not limited to:

- Models and measures of social interaction dynamics

- Computational methods in studying and analysing social behaviour

- Technology-based approaches to simulate social interaction

- Virtual humans and conversational agents

- Verbal and nonverbal communication

- Mimicry and interpersonal adaptation

- Social perception and cognition

- Philosophical issues of social cognition and interaction

- Innovative and novel VR setups

- Technical solutions for common VR setups problems

- Realtime multimodal VR

- Ethics and VR

- Applications in clinical VR, therapeutical or training scenarios