| Using a simulated mobile video telephone, I have used this dissertation research as an opportunity to explore the impact of visual and behavioral realism of avatars on interactants' Social Copresence, in emotionally engaged conversations. I have also arrived at an elaborated definition of Social Copresence to better assess interactants' engagement with their interaction partners in social interactions that do not involve particular task outcomes, but lead to self-disclosure, affective evaluation of the interaction partner, and evaluation of perceived capability of the medium.;I have examined ways to secure mobile video telephone users' anonymity while preserving their most essential nonverbal affective behaviors. During the experiment, participants were represented by avatars that varied in visual and behavioral realism and interacted in same gender and mixed gender dyads. In addition, I investigated how people demonstrated their social responses differently between an "avatar" condition and a "non-avatar" (audio-only) condition, since people currently use mobile telephones as a typical "audio-only" telephone. Therefore, I conducted one extra "audio-only" condition with 9 dyads. Consequently, participants rated the Copresence, the Social Richness of Medium, and the Interactant Satisfaction of the conversation. Interactant Satisfaction was a new measurement of Social Copresence constructed to evaluate interactants' affective dimensions of their interaction partners.;Using various combinations of static and dynamic, high- and low-iconic (both video and graphically animated) avatars, further non-avatar experimental results on 198 participants revealed that interactants had the greatest feelings of Social Copresence with dynamic high-iconic (similar to the human communicator) avatars incorporating correct facial expressions, even when these avatars were presented on the small screen of mobile telephones in which individual identities were hidden.;The results determined an economical combination of iconic and behavioral realism of avatars that generated the greatest affective engagement in anonymous social interactions using mobile video telephones. |
