How do varied populations interact with embodied conversational agents? Findings from inner-city adolescents and prisoners

Computers in Human Behavior

Volumn 24, Issue 3, 2008, Pages 1104-1138

  Hubal, Robert C ^a   Fishbein, Diana H ^a   Sheppard, Monica S ^a   Paschall, Mallie J ^b   Eldreth, Diana L ^a   Hyde, Christopher T ^c  

^a RTI INTERNATIONAL   (United States)

^b PACIFIC INSTITUTE FOR RESEARCH AND EVALUATION   (United States)

^c BioAssessments LLC   (United States)

Author keywords

Adolescent participants; Embodied conversational agents; Prison inmates; User acceptance

Indexed keywords

DECISION MAKING; PERSONNEL TESTING; POPULATION DYNAMICS; PRISONS; USER INTERFACES;

ADOLESCENT PARTICIPANTS; EMBODIED CONVERSATIONAL AGENTS (ECA); PRISON INMATES; USER ACCEPTANCE;

BEHAVIORAL RESEARCH;

EID: 39849094511     PISSN: 07475632     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1016/j.chb.2007.03.010     Document Type: Article

References (100)

1. Aharonovich E., Nunes E., and Hasin D. Cognitive impairment, retention and abstinence among cocaine abusers in cognitive-behavioral treatment. Drug and Alcohol Dependence 71 2 (2003) 207-211
2. André, E., Klesen, M., Gebhard, P., Allen, S., & Rist, T. (2000). Exploiting models of personality and emotions to control the behavior of animated interface agents. In Proceedings of the international conference on autonomous agents, Barcelona, Spain (pp. 3-7).
3. André E., Rist T., and Müller J. Employing AI methods to control the behavior of animated interface agents. International Journal of Applied Artificial Intelligence 13 4-5 (1999) 415-448
4. Aylett, R. (2001). Towards the Holodeck: A socially constrained planner for synthetic characters. Paper presented at the twentieth workshop of the UK Planning and Scheduling Special Interest Group, Edinburgh, 13-14 December 2001.
5. Bartneck, C. (2002). Integrating the OCC model of emotions in embodied characters. In Workshop on virtual conversational characters: Applications, methods, and research challenge, Melbourne.
6. Bates J. The role of emotion in believable agents. Communications of the ACM 37 7 (1994) 122-125
7. Bickmore, T., & Cassell, J. (2000). 'How about this weather?': Social dialogue with embodied conversational agents. In: Proceedings of the AAAI fall symposium on socially intelligent agents, North Falmouth, MA.
8. Bosworth K., Espelage D., DuBay T., Daytner G., and Karageorge K. Preliminary evaluation of a multimedia violence prevention program for adolescents. American Journal of Health Behavior 24 4 (2000) 268-280
9. Botvin G.J., Baker E., Dusenbury L., Botvin E.M., and Diaz T. Long-term follow-up of a randomized drug abuse prevention trial in a white middle-class population. Journal of the American Medical Association 273 (1995) 1106-1112
10. Camburn, D. P., Gunther-Mohr, C., & Lessler, J. T. (1999). Developing new models of interviewer training. In Proceedings of the international conference on survey nonresponse, Portland, OR.
11. Cassell, J., Bickmore, T., Vilhjálmsson, H., & Yan, H. (2000). More than just a pretty face: Affordances of embodiment. In Proceedings of the international conference on intelligent user interfaces, New Orleans, LA (pp. 52-59).
12. Cerrato, L., & Ekeklint, S. (2002). Different ways of ending human-machine interactions. In Proc of AAMAS02 Workshop, Bologna.
13. Cho, H., Iritani, B., Hallfors, D., & Halpern, C. T. (2000). Sex, drugs and suicide: Relationships among key adolescent risk behaviors. In Proceedings of the annual meeting of the American Public Health Association, Boston, MA, November 12-16, 2000.
14. Christoph N. Empirical evaluation methodology for embodied conversational agents. In: Ruttkay Zs., and Pelachaud C. (Eds). Evaluating ECAs (2004), Kluwer Academic Press
15. Conati C. Probabilistic assessment of user's emotions in educational games. Applied Artificial Intelligence 16 7-8 (2002) 555-575
16. Cowell A.J., and Stanney K.M. Manipulation of non-verbal interaction style and demographic embodiment to increase anthropomorphic computer character credibility. International Journal of Human-Computer Studies 62 2 (2005) 281-306
17. Dahlbäck N., Jönsson A., and Ahrenberg L. Wizard of Oz studies - why and how. Knowledge-based Systems 6 4 (1993) 258-266
18. Dawes M.A., Antelman S.M., Vanyukov M.M., Giancola P., Tarter R.E., Sussman E.J., et al. Developmental sources of variation in liability to adolescent substance use disorders. Drug and Alcohol Dependence 61 1 (2000) 3-14
19. Deterding R., Milliron C., and Hubal R. The virtual pediatric standardized patient application: Formative evaluation findings. In: Westwood J.D., Haluck R.S., Hoffman H.M., Mogel G.T., Phillips R., Robb R.A., et al. (Eds). The magical next becomes the medical now (2005), IOS Press, Amsterdam
20. Elliott, C. (1993). Using the affective reasoner to support social simulations. In Proceedings of the international joint conference on artificial intelligence, Chambery, France (pp. 194-200).
21. Fishbein, D., Scott, M., Hyde, C., Newlin, D., Hubal, R., Serin, R., Chrousos, G., & Alesci, S. (2006). Neuropsychological and emotional deficits predict correctional treatment response. Final Report, March 31, 2006. Submitted to the Office of Justice Programs, National Institute of Justice, Award #2002-MU-BX-0013. Available from .
22. Fishbein D.H. Neuropsychological dysfunction, drug abuse, and violence: Conceptual framework and preliminary findings. Criminal Justice and Behavior 27 (2000) 139-159
23. Fishbein D.H., Hyde C., Eldreth D., Paschall M.J., Hubal R., Das A., et al. Neurocognitive skills moderate urban male adolescents' responses to preventive intervention materials. Drug and Alcohol Dependence 82 1 (2006) 47-60
24. Frank, G. A., Guinn, C. I., Hubal, R. C., Stanford, M. A., Pope, P., & Lamm-Weisel, D. (2002). JUST-TALK: An application of responsive virtual human technology. In Proceedings of the interservice/industry training, simulation and education conference, Orlando, FL.
25. Frankfort-Nachmias C., and Nachmias D. Research methods in the social sciences. 6th ed. (2000), Wadsworth, New York
26. Funge J., Tu X., and Terzopoulos D. Cognitive modeling: Knowledge, reasoning and planning for intelligent characters. Computer graphics proceedings, ACM SIGGRAPH (1999) 29-38
27. Giancola P.R., Mezzich A.C., and Tarter R.E. Disruptive, delinquent and aggressive behavior in female adolescents with a psychoactive substance use disorder: Relation to executive cognitive functioning. Journal of Studies on Alcohol 59 5 (1998) 560-567
28. Giancola P.R., Moss H.B., Martin C.S., Kirisci L., and Tarter R.E. Executive cognitive functioning predicts reactive aggression in boys at high risk for substance abuse: A prospective study. Alcoholism: Clinical and Experimental Research 20 (1996) 740-744
29. Godéreaux C., El Guedj P.O., Revolta F., and Nugues P. Un agent conversationnel pour naviguer dans les mondes virtuels. Humankybernetik 37 1 (1996) 39-51
30. Gottfredson D.C., and Wilson D.B. Characteristics of effective school-based substance abuse prevention. Prevention Science 4 (2003) 27-38
31. Gratch J., and Marsella S. Some lessons from emotion psychology for the design of lifelike characters. Journal of Applied Artificial Intelligence 19 3-4 (2005) 215-233
32. Guerra N.G., and Slaby R.G. Cognitive mediators of aggression in adolescent offenders: 2. Intervention. Developmental Psychology 26 (1990) 269-277
33. Guinn C., and Hubal R. Extracting emotional information from the text of spoken dialog. Proceedings of the workshop on assessing and adapting to user attitudes and affect: Why when and how? (2003), User Modeling, Inc., Johnstown, PA
34. Guinn C., and Hubal R. An evaluation of virtual human technology in informational kiosks. Proceedings of the international conference on multimodal interfaces (2004), ACM Press, New York
35. Guinn C.I., and Montoya R.J. Natural language processing in virtual reality. Modern Simulation & Training 6 (1998) 44-55
36. Hammond W.R., and Yung B. Preventing violence in at-risk African-American youth. Journal of Health Care for the Poor and Underserved 2 3 (1991) 359-373
37. Hayes-Roth B., Amano K., Saker R., and Sephton T. Training brief intervention with a virtual coach and virtual patients. In: Wiederhold B.K., and Riva G. (Eds). Annual review of CyberTherapy and telemedicine (2004), Interactive Media Institute, San Diego, CA 85-96
38. Hermann D., and Parente R. Retraining cognition: Techniques and application (1996), Aspen Publishers, Baltimore, MD
39. Hill R.W., Gratch J., Marsella S., Rickel J., Swartout W., and Traum D. Virtual humans in the mission rehearsal exercise system. Künstliche Intelligenz (KI Journal), Special issue on Embodied Conversational Agents 17 4 (2003) 5-10
40. Hill C.D., Rogers R., and Bickford M.E. Predicting aggressive and socially disruptive behavior in a maximum security forensic psychiatric hospital. Journal of Forensic Science 41 1 (1996) 56-59
41. Holbrook M.I. Anger management training in prison inmates. Psychological Reports 81 2 (1997) 623-626
42. Hubal, R. C., & Frank, G. A. (2001). Interactive training applications using responsive virtual human technology. In Proceedings of the interservice/industry training systems and education conference, Orlando, FL, November 26-29, 2001.
43. Hubal R.C., and Day R.S. Informed consent procedures: An experimental test using a virtual character in a dialog systems training application. Journal of Biomedical Informatics 39 5 (2006) 532-540
44. Hubal, R. C., Frank, G. A., & Guinn, C. I. (2003). Lessons learned in modeling schizophrenic and depressed responsive virtual humans for training. In Proceedings of the intelligent user interface conference, Miami, FL.
45. Isbister, K., & Doyle, P. (2002). Design and evaluation of embodied conversational agents: A proposed taxonomy. In Proceedings of the joint conference on autonomous agents and multi-agent systems, Bologna, Italy, July 15-19.
46. Jessor R. New perspectives on adolescent risk behavior (1998), Cambridge University Press, Cambridge
47. Johnsen, K., Dickerson, R., Raij, A., Lok, B., Jackson, J., Shin, M., et al. (2005). Experiences in using immersive virtual characters to educate medical communication skills. In Proceedings of the IEEE virtual reality conference, Bonn, Germany, March 12-16, 2005.
48. Kellam S.G., Ling X., Merisca R., Brown C.H., and Ialongo N. The effect of the level of aggression in the first grade classroom on the course and malleability of aggressive behavior into middle school. Development and Psychopathology 10 2 (1998) 165-185
49. Kim Y., and Baylor A.L. A social cognitive framework for designing pedagogical agents as learning companions. Educational Technology Research and Development 54 3 (2006) 223-243
50. Kizakevich P.N., Lux L., Duncan S., Guinn C., and McCartney M.L. Virtual simulated patients for bioterrorism preparedness training. In: Westwood J.D., Hoffman H.M., Mogel G.T., Phillips R., Robb R.A., and Stredney D. (Eds). NextMed: Health horizon (2003), IOS Press, Amsterdam 165-167
51. Kizakevich P.N., McCartney M.L., Nissman D.B., Starko K., and Smith N.T. Virtual medical trainer: Patient assessment and trauma care simulator. In: Westwood J.D., Hoffman H.M., Stredney D., and Weghorst S.J. (Eds). Medicine meets virtual reality: Art science technology: Healthcare (r)evolution (1998), IOS Press, Amsterdam 309-315
52. Kizakevich P.N., Teague S.M., Nissman D.B., Jochem W.J., Niclou R., and Sharma M.K. Comparative measures of systolic ejection during treadmill exercise by impedance cardiography and Doppler echocardiography. Biological Psychology 36 1-2 (1993) 51-61
53. Klinger E., Bouchard S., Légeron P., Roy S., Lauer F., Chemin I., et al. Virtual reality therapy versus Cognitive Behavior Therapy for social phobia: A preliminary controlled study. CyberPsychology & Behavior 8 1 (2005) 76-88
54. Koda, T., & Maes, P. (1996). Agents with faces: The effects of personification of agents. In Fifth IEEE international workshop on robot and human communication. IEEE Press, Piscataway, NJ.
55. Lester, J., Converse, S., Kahler, S., Barlow, S., Stone, B., & Bhogal, R. (1997). The persona effect: Affective impact of animated pedagogical agents. In Proceedings of the human factors in computing systems conference (pp. 359-366). ACM Press, New York, NY.
56. Link M.W., Armsby P.P., Hubal R.C., and Guinn C.I. Accessibility and acceptance of responsive virtual human technology as a survey interviewer training tool. Computers in Human Behavior 22 3 (2006) 412-426
57. Louwerse M.M., Graesser A.C., Lu S., and Mitchell H.H. Social cues in animated conversational agents. Applied Cognitive Psychology 19 6 (2005) 693-704
58. Magnenat-Thalmann, N., & Kshirsagar, S. (2000). Communicating with autonomous virtual humans. In Proceedings of the seventeenth TWENTE workshop on language technology, Enschede, Universiteit Twente, October 2000 (pp. 1-8).
59. Manchester D., Hodgkinson A., and Casey T. Prolonged, severe behavioral disturbance following traumatic brain injury: What can be done?. Brain Injury 11 (1997) 605-617
60. Margalit M. Academic competence and social adjustment of boys with learning disabilities and boys with behavior disorders. Journal of Learning Disabilities 22 (1989) 41-45
61. McCollum, C., Deaton, J., Barba, C., Santarelli, T., Singer, M., & Kerr, B. (2004). Developing an immersive, cultural training system. In Proceedings of the interservice/industry training, simulation, and education conference, December 1-2, 2004. National Training Systems Association, Arlington, VA.
62. Moreno R., Mayer R.E., Spires H.A., and Lester J.C. The case for social agency in computer-based teaching: Do students learn more deeply when they interact with animated pedagogical agents?. Cognition and Instruction 19 (2001) 177-213
63. Moundridou M., and Virvou M. Evaluating the persona effect of an interface agent in an intelligent tutoring system. Journal of Computer Assisted Learning 18 3 (2002) 253-261
64. Nicholaichuk T., Gordon A., Gu D., and Wong S. Outcome of an institutional sexual offender treatment program: A comparison between treated and matched untreated offenders. Sexual Abuse 12 2 (2000) 139-153
65. Norling E., and Ritter F.E. Towards supporting psychologically plausible variability in agent-based human modelling. AAMAS 2004 (2004) 758-765
66. Olsen, D.E. (2001). The simulation of a human for interpersonal skill training. In Proceedings of the office of national drug control policy international technology symposium, San Diego, CA.
67. Ortony A., Clore G.L., and Collins A. The cognitive structure of emotions (1988), Cambridge University Press, Cambridge
68. Paschall M.J., and Fishbein D.H. Executive cognitive functioning and aggression: A public health perspective. Aggression and Violent Behavior: A Review Journal 6 (2001) 1-21
69. Paschall M.J., Fishbein D.H., Hubal R.C., and Eldreth D. Psychometric properties of virtual reality vignette performance measures: A novel approach for assessing adolescents' social competency skills. Health Education Research: Theory and Practice 20 1 (2005) 61-70
70. Paschall M.J., and Flewelling R.L. Measuring immediate outcomes of violence prevention programs targeting African-American male youth: An exploratory assessment of the psychometric properties of six psychosocial measures. Health Education Research: Theory and Practice 12 1 (1997) 117-128
71. Paschall M.J., and Hubbard M.L. Effects of neighborhood and family stressors on African-American male adolescents' self-worth and propensity for violent behavior. Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology 66 (1998) 825-831
72. Picard R.W., Vyzas E., and Healey J. Toward machine emotional intelligence: Analysis of affective physiological state. IEEE Transactions on Pattern Analysis and Machine Intelligence 23 10 (2001) 1175-1191
73. Prendinger, H., & Ishizuka, M. (2001). Social role awareness in animated agents. In Proceedings of the international conference on autonomous agents, Montreal, ON, Canada (pp. 270-277).
74. Raine A. The psychopathology of crime: Criminal behavior as a clinical disorder (1993), Academic Press, New York, NY
75. Raybourn, E., Heneghan, J., Deagle, E., & Mendini, K. (2005). Adaptive thinking & leadership simulation game training for Special Forces officers. In Proceedings of the interservice/industry training, simulation and education conference, Orlando, FL, November 29-December 1, 2005.
76. Reiss A.J., Miczek K.A., and Roth J.A. Understanding and preventing violence: Volume 2. Biobehavioral influences (1994), National Academy Press, Washington, DC
77. Rice M.F. Violent offender research and implications for the criminal justice system. American Psychologist April (1997) 418-423
78. Rickel J., and Johnson W.L. Animated agents for procedural training in virtual reality: Perception, cognition, and motor control. Applied Artificial Intelligence 13 (1999) 343-382
79. Rogers R.D., Owen A.M., Middleton H.C., Williams E.J., Pickard J.D., Sahakian B.J., et al. Choosing between small, likely rewards and large, unlikely rewards activates inferior and orbital prefrontal cortex. The Journal of Neuroscience 19 20 (1999) 9029-9038
80. Rogers R.D., and Robbins T.W. Investigating the neurocognitive deficits associated with chronic drug misuse. Current Opinions in Neurobiology 11 2 (2001) 250-257
81. Rothwell N.A., La Vigna G.W., and Willis T.J. A non-aversive rehabilitation approach for people with severe behavioural problems resulting from brain injury. Brain Injury 13 (1999) 521-533
82. Rousseau, D., & Hayes-Roth, B. (1997). Improvisational virtual actors with flexible personalities. KSL Report #97-10, Stanford University.
83. Ruttkay Z., Dormann C., and Noot H. Embodied conversational agents on a common ground: A framework for design and evaluation. From Brows to Trust: Evaluating Embodied Conversational Agents (2004), Kluwer, Dordrecht
84. Ryu J., and Baylor A.L. The psychometric structure of pedagogical agent persona. Technology, Instruction, Cognition & Learning 2 4 (2005) 291-319
85. Shine J., and Hobson J. Institutional behavior and time in treatment among psychopaths admitted to a prison-based therapeutic community. Medical Science Law 40 4 (2000) 327-335
86. Slaby R.G., and Guerra N.G. Cognitive mediators of aggression in adolescent offenders: 1. Assessment. Developmental Psychology 24 (1988) 580-588
87. Slaby R.G., and Wilson-Brewer R. Vignettes developed for the evaluation of violence prevention curricula targeting middle school students (1992), Education Development Center, Newton, MA
88. Slater M., Pertaub D.P., and Steed A. Public speaking in virtual reality: Facing an audience of avatars. IEEE Computer Graphics and Applications 19 2 (1999) 6-9
89. Stokes J. Speech interaction and human behavior representations (HBRs). Proceedings of 10th conference on computer generated forces and behavioral representation (2001), SISO, Inc., Norfolk, VA 467-476
90. Takács, B. (2005), Special education & rehabilitation: Teaching and healing with interactive graphics. IEEE Computer Graphics and Applications, Special Issue on Computer Graphics in Education, September-October 2005.
91. Tarter R., Vanyukov M., Giancola P., Dawes M., Blackson T., Mezzich A., et al. Etiology of early age onset substance use disorder: A maturational perspective. Developmental Psychopathology 11 4 (1999) 657-683
92. Volavka J. The neurobiology of violence (1995), American Psychiatric Press, Washington, DC
93. Wetter T., and Nüse R. Use of natural language for knowledge acquisition: Strategies to cope with semantic and pragmatic variation. IBM Journal of Research and Development 36 3 (1992) 435-468
94. Wilson B.A. Cognitive rehabilitation: How it is and how it might be. Journal of the International Neuropsychological Society 3 (1997) 487-496
95. Woods S., Hall L., Dautenhahn K., and Wolke D. Implications of gender differences for the development of animated characters for the study of bullying behaviour. Computers in Human Behavior 23 1 (2007) 770-786
96. Wray, R. E., Laird, J. E., Nuxoll, A., Stokes, D., & Kerfoot, A. (2004). Synthetic adversaries for urban combat training. Presented at Innovative applications of artificial intelligence conference, San Jose, July, 2004.
97. Xiao, J., Stasko, J., & Catrambone, R. (2002). Embodied conversational agents as a UI paradigm: A framework for evaluation. Presented at Embodied conversational agents: Let's specify and evaluate them!, Bologna.
98. Yung B., and Hammond W.R. Positive adolescent choices training: A model for violence prevention groups with African-American youth (1995), Research Press, Champaign, IL
99. Yung B., and Hammond R. Breaking the cycle: A culturally sensitive prevention program for African-American children and adolescents. In: Lutzker J. (Ed). Handbook of child abuse research and treatment (1998), Plenum Publishing, New York 319-340
100. Zimmer, J., Kizakevich, P., Heneghan, J., Schwetzke, H., & Duncan, S. (2003). The technology behind full body 3D patients. Presented at the medicine meets virtual reality conference, Newport Beach, CA, January 25, 2003.