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arXiv AI By Nathalia Gomez, Haig Shamlian, Omar Khan, Tiffany D. Do

Listening and Mirroring: The Effects of Verbal Attunement and Behavioral Mimicry on Social and Empathic Perceptions of Embodied AI Agents in VR

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The study investigates how verbal attunement and real‑time behavioral mimicry affect users’ perceptions of an embodied AI counselor in virtual reality. Participants interacted with a system that varied in verbal attunement (attuned vs. neutral) and behavioral mimicry (present vs. absent). Results indicated that verbal attunement most reliably increased perceived empathy, while mimicry had a marginal effect on perceived humanness and showed exploratory positive associations with empathy, positivity, and humanness, especially among female participants.

Machine-generated by The Flow from the publisher's headline and feed description — not written or checked by a human. The full article lives at arXiv AI.

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