Giving Social Robots a Conversational Memory for Motivational Experience Sharing

In ongoing and consecutive conversations with persons, a social robot has to determine which aspects to remember and how to address them in the conversation. In the health domain, important aspects concern the health-related goals, the experienced progress (expressed sentiment) and the ongoing motivation to pursue them. Despite the progress in...

Users’ needs for a digital smoking cessation application and how to address them: A mixed-methods study

Background Despite their increasing prevalence and potential, eHealth applications for behavior change suffer from a lack of adherence and from dropout. Advances in virtual coach technology provide new opportunities to improve this. However, these applications still do not always offer what people need. We, therefore, need a better understanding...

Using a Virtual Coach to Quit Smoking: 14 Themes for User Needs: 14 themes for user needs

Designers of eHealth applications for behavior change face many options. Thisincludes the selection of behavior change techniques, the implementation ofthese techniques (e.g., frequency), and the involvement of other parties such as avirtual coach (e.g.) or healthcare professionals (e.g.). Ideally, designerschoose from these options such that...

An embodied conversational agent coach to support societal participation learning by low-literate users

People of low literacy could benefit from automated support when learning about societal participation. We design an Embodied Conversational Agent (ECA) ‘coach’ that can provide effective learning support to low-literate learners, develop a prototype virtual learning environment, and evaluate this prototype with low-literate end users. First, we...

Using a conversational agent for thought recording as a cognitive therapy task: Feasibility, content, and feedback

E-mental health for depression is increasingly used in clinical practice, but patient adherence suffers as therapist involvement decreases. One reason may be the low responsiveness of existing programs: especially autonomous systems are lacking in their input interpretation and feedback-giving capabilities. Here, we explore (a) to what extent a...

Using scaffolding to formalize digital coach support for low-literate learners

In this study, we attempt to specify the cognitive support behavior of a previously designed embodied conversational agent coach that provides learning support to low-literates. Three knowledge gaps are identified in the existing work: an incomplete specification of the behaviors that make up ‘support,’ an incomplete specification of how this...

Reinforcement Learning-Based Persuasion by a Conversational Agent for Behavior Change

There is certainly some behavior that you want to change. Maybe you want to become more physically active, call your mother more often or snack less when watching TV at night. Let’s assume that you want to quit smoking. You are not doing this alone, but are supported by your coach Hannah. Hannah constantly persuades you to stick to your...

Considering patient safety in autonomous e-mental health systems - Detecting risk situations and referring patients back to human care

Background: Digital health interventions can fill gaps in mental healthcare provision. However, autonomous e-mental health (AEMH) systems also present challenges for effective risk management. To balance autonomy and safety, AEMH systems need to detect risk situations and act on these appropriately. One option is sending automatic alerts to...

Socio-Cognitive Engineering of a Robotic Partner for Child’s Diabetes Self-Management

Social or humanoid robots do hardly show up in "the wild", aiming at pervasive human benefits such as child health. This paper presents the socio-cognitive engineering (SCE) methodology for the required field research \& development of robots, focusing on the incremental development of a social robot and child-robot activities that support the...

A digital coach that provides affective and social learning support to low-literate learners

In this study, we investigate if a digital coach for low-literate learners that provides cognitive learning support based on scaffolding can be improved by adding affective learning support based on motivational interviewing, and social learning support based on small talk. Several knowledge gaps are identified: motivational interviewing and...

Friendship with a robot: Children's perception of similarity between a robot's physical and virtual embodiment that supports diabetes self-management

Objective: The PAL project develops a conversational agent with a physical (robot) and virtual (avatar) embodiment to support diabetes self-management of children ubiquitously. This paper assesses 1) the effect of perceived similarity between robot and avatar on children's' friendship towards the avatar, and 2) the effect of this friendship on...

How should a virtual agent present psychoeducation? Influence of verbal and textual presentation on adherence

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVE: With the rise of autonomous e-mental health applications, virtual agents can play a major role in improving trustworthiness, therapy outcome and adherence. In these applications, it is important that patients adhere in the sense that they perform the tasks, but also that they adhere to the specific recommendations on...

A therapy system for post-traumatic stress disorder using a virtual agent and virtual storytelling to reconstruct traumatic memories

Although post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is well treatable, many people do not get the desired treatment due to barriers to care (such as stigma and cost). This paper presents a system that bridges this gap by enabling patients to follow therapy at home. A therapist is only involved remotely, to monitor progress and serve as a safety net....

Ontology engineering for the design and implementation of personal pervasive lifestyle support

ReMindMe: Agent-Based Support for Self-Disclosure of Personal Memories in People with Alzheimer’s Disease

This paper presents work on the design rationale and architecture of ReMindMe. ReMindMe aims to provide agent-based support for people with Alzheimer’s disease and their social environment by playing music with a strong personal meaning to the patient so as to activate personal memory recall. ReMindMe stimulates reminiscence and self-disclosure...

Design and Development of a Physical and a Virtual Embodied Conversational Agent for Social Support of Older Adults

Populations in developed societies show an increasingly higher life expectancy across the globe. To support older adults to live longer and healthier lives in the familiar surroundings of their homes, technological developments, such as robots and avatars, have a great potential. To investigate long-term interactions between older adults and a ...

On conversational agents with mental states

Embodied conversational agents (ECAs) have been put forward as a promising means for the training of social skills. The traditional approach to drive the behaviour of ECAs during human-agent dialogues is to use conversation trees. Although this approach is easy to use and very transparent, an important limitation of conversation trees is that...

Taking turns in flying with a virtual wingman

In this study we investigate miscommunications in interactions between human pilots and a virtual wingman, represented by our virtual agent Ashley. We made an inventory of the type of problems that occur in such interactions using recordings of Ashley in flight briefings with pilots and designed a perception experiment to find evidence of human...