Perceived Characteristics and Pedagogical Efficacy of Animated Conversational Agents.

We investigated college students' perceptions of a diverse sample of animated conversational agents. We also examined the pedagogical efficacy of those agents. We found that people perceive differences among the agents on several dimensions, such as likeability, and that the agents differ in pedagogical efficacy. However, none of the characteristics that we measured accounted for differences in pedagogical efficacy across the agents. We discuss implications for the field of agent studies with particular emphasis on the creation of peda-gogically effective conversational agents and suggest directions for future research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]