Supporting Electronic Mental Health with Artificial Intelligence: Thought Record Analysis and Guidance

This thesis investigates how artificial intelligence can support e-mental health for depression, i.e. the delivery of treatment and prevention interventions for depression using technology. E-mental health for depression is a promising means for bridging the treatment gap since it addresses many of the barriers that prevent people in need of...

Explainable Artificial Intelligence for human-AI collaboration

As a society, we have come to notice the influence and impact Artificially Intelligent (AI) agents have on the way we live our lives. For these AI agents to support us both effectively and responsibly, we require an understanding on how they make decisions and what the consequences are of these decisions. The research _field of Explainable...

Towards Artificial Empathic Memory: Accounting for the Influence of Personal Memories in Automatic Predictions of Affect

A virtual coach for low-literates to practice societal participation

This thesis presents the research, design, and evaluation of the learning support system VESSEL: Virtual Environment to Support the Societal participation Education of Low-literates. The project was started from the premise that people of low literacy in the Netherlands participate in society less often and less effectively than literate people...

Explaining Robot Behaviour: Beliefs, Desires, and Emotions in Explanations of Robot Action

Social humanoid robots are complex intelligent systems that in the near future<br/>will operate in domains including healthcare and education. Transparency of what robots intend during interaction is important. This helps the users trust them and increases a user’s motivation for, e.g., behaviour change (health) or learning (education). Trust...

Design and evaluation of simulated reflective thoughts in virtual reality exposure training

Social skills are often an integral part of functioning in modern society, and therefore, in the past decades, social skills training has received considerable research attraction. Various physical and digital approaches have been developed to improve people’s performance in social interaction. Among these approaches, social skills training...

Computer-Based Social Anxiety Regulation in Virtual Reality Exposure Therapy

Social anxiety disorder (SAD), commonly referred to social phobia, is one of the most an immense and unreasonable fear of social interaction. Cognitive behaviour therapy (CBT) is the most thoroughly studied nonpharmacologic approach to the treatment of SAD patients. In CBT, patients are gradually, in <i>vivo</i>, exposed to anxiety-provoking...

The situated Design Rationale: of a social robot for child's disease self-management

A young boy with type 1 Diabetes Mellitus is supported by a social robot on the road to self-management. The robot has knowledge on the goals that the boy needs to reach, as discussed with his health care professional. The robot also knows the boy’s activity options and preferences. It suggests activities based on this knowledge, but also...

A Virtual Agent for Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder Treatment

Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is a mental disorder with a high impact on quality of life, and despite the existence of treatment, barriers still stop many people from receiving the care they need. An e-mental health system for home use might remove some of these barriers, as it provides a privacy-sensitive and accessible way of following...

Normative Social Applications: User-centered Models for Sharing Location in the Family Life Domain

Social media platforms are used by a massive, growing number of users, who use these platforms to share content such as text, photos, videos, and location information. As the spread of social media is playing an increasingly important role in our world, literature has shown that while aiming to promote a number of human values (e.g. friendship,...

Self-management support system for renal transplant patients: Understanding adherence and acceptance

Computer-based support for disease self-management has been proposed for chronic patients to stimulate early awareness of disease changes, facilitate patients’ autonomy, and reduce demands on health care resources. Renal transplant patients need lifelong care and can be viewed as chronically ill: they visit hospital regularly to monitor their...

A virtual sleepcoach for people suffering from insomnia

People suffering from insomnia have problems falling asleep or staying asleep. Insomnia impairs people’s daily life and their quality of life decreases. Approximately 10% of the population suffers from insomnia. The common treatment for insomnia is cognitive behavioural therapy for insomnia (CBT-I), mostly delivered by a therapist that people...

Public speaking in virtual reality: Audience design and speaker experiences

Whether we are talking about our research at a conference, making a speech at a friend’s wedding, or presenting a proposal in a businessmeeting,we have to speak in public from time to time. How well we deliver a presentation affects the way people think about us and our message. To deliver a well-received speech, preparation is necessary. Among...

Affective Body Language of Humanoid Robots: Perception and Effects in Human Robot Interaction

Improving trainees’ performances while under stress using real-time feedback

Professionals working in different domains often experience stressful conditions evoked by disasters or crisis scenarios. Regardless of these conditions, they have to perform at high standards in order to preserve safety for themselves, avoid any casualties, and to resolve the overall situation. Stress, however, negatively affects cognitive...

Doing the right task: Context-aware notification for mobile police teams

The main argument in this thesis is that mobile technology has to adapt information presentation to the mobile use context and Human Factors (attention, workload and individual characteristics). This will provide better support for work in these domains than non-adaptive systems. We expect such context-aware mobile support (CAMS) systems to...

ePartner for Self-Care: How to Enhance eHealth with Personal Computer Assistants

There is a shift in traditional health care, from one-side dictated treatment to a situation wherein the patient is involved, self-determined, and performs self-care activities. This new patient role is complex, but by deploying Information and Communication Technology (ICT) in the medical domain, eHealth services can stimulate maintaining a...