Adaptive Data-Driven Persuasive Communication for a Conversational Agent to Support Behavior Change

A human therapist continuously adapts how they persuade a client to adhere to a behavior change intervention based on theoretical expertise, past experience with the client as well as other clients, and the client's current situation. We aim at incorporating these elements into the persuasive communication of a conversational agent that acts as...

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

Robot Mood is Contagious: Effects of Robot Body Language in the Imitation Game

Mood contagion is an automatic mechanism that induces a congruent mood state by means of the observation of another person's emotional expression. In this paper, we address the question whether robot mood displayed during an imitation game can (a) be recognized by participants and (b) produce contagion effects. Robot mood was displayed by...

Persuading to Prepare for Quitting Smoking with a Virtual Coach: Using States and User Characteristics to Predict Behavior

Despite their prevalence in eHealth applications for behavior change, persuasive messages tend to have small effects on behavior. Conditions or states (e.g., confidence, knowledge, motivation) and characteristics (e.g., gender, age, personality) of persuadees are two promising components for more effective algorithms for choosing persuasive...

An Iterative Interaction-Design Method for Multi-Modal Robot Communication

The design space of human-robot interaction is large and multi-dimensional. A sound design requires a systematic theory-driven exploration, specification and refinement of design variables. There is a need for a practical method and tool to iteratively specify the content of the dialogue (e.g., speech acts) with the accompanying expressive...

Enthusiastic Robots make Better Contact

This paper presents the design and evaluation of human-like welcoming behaviors for a humanoid robot to draw the attention of passersby by following a three-step model: (1) selecting a target (person) to engage, (2) executing behaviors to draw the target's attention, and (3) monitoring the attentive response. A computer vision algorithm was...

Attitudes Toward a Virtual Smoking Cessation Coach: Relationship and Willingness to Continue

Virtual coaches have the potential to address the low adherence common to eHealth applications for behavior change by, for example, providing motivational support. However, given the multitude of factors affecting users’ attitudes toward virtual coaches, more insights are needed on how such virtual coaches can be designed to affect these...

Mood contagion of robot body language in human robot interaction

The aim of our work is to design bodily mood expressions of humanoid robots for interactive settings that can be recognized by users and have (positive) effects on people who interact with the robots. To this end, we develop a parameterized behavior model for humanoid robots to express mood through body language. Different settings of the...

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

Background<br/>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...

The design of virtual audiences: Noticeable and recognizable behavioral styles

Expressive virtual audiences are used in scientific research, psychotherapy, and training. To create an expressive virtual audience, developers need to know how specific audience behaviors are associated with certain characteristics of an audience, such as attitude, and how well people can recognize these characteristics. To examine this, four...

Mobile Phone-Delivered Cognitive Behavioral Therapy for Insomnia: A Randomized Waitlist Controlled Trial

Background: This study is one of the first randomized controlled trials investigating cognitive behavioral therapy for insomnia (CBT-I) delivered by a fully automated mobile phone app. Such an app can potentially increase the accessibility of insomnia treatment for the 10% of people who have insomnia. Objective: The objective of our study was to...

Computer-based perspective broadening support for appraisal training: Acceptance and effects

Post-traumatic stress affects millions of people worldwide. Appraisal training is an intervention that has been used to decrease the negative effects of a traumatic event. In two studies, the acceptance and effects of technology in supporting appraisal was studied. Study 1, a descriptive study, examined the response to and acceptance of a...