Social Reasoning and Agency

Ph.D. Proposal - The Little Computer People Taxonomy and Social Physics Engine

This proposal describes our efforts to evaluate and operationalize a taxonomy and an accompanying framework or ``social physics engine''. Our taxonomy and accompanying framework would allow scientists to reproduce and evaluate existing models, collaborate on standards, share advances with other researchers and practitioners, allow for better communication and methodologies developed for new techniques, and allow for a more rigorous model-to-model analysis.

Little Computer People: A Survey and Taxonomy of Simulated Models of Social Interaction

Bolstered by a growing interest in simulating believable non-player characters (NPCs), work on NPC models has spanned topics such as planning, procedural storytelling, decision-making, and social dynamics. However, research groups work in isolation, …

Ph.D. Quals - Lyra: Simulating Believable Opinionated NPCs (Extended)

This work expands on and extends work previously pubished for the Lyra System towards the Ph.D. Computer Science qualifier requirement at NC State University. We conducted a human-subjects study of Lyra to evaluate the generated conversations and …

Lyra: Simulating Believable Opinionated Virtual Characters

Lyra is a simulation of a opinionated population of virtual characters with inherent biases that can believably debate politically-charged topics. We conducted a human-subjects study to evaluate these generated conversations and affinity groups for their believability and to inform future iterations of the simulation. We believe successful simulation of opinion change in social dynamics provides a foundation for computational recognition, prediction, and interfacing with humans.