Chatterbox: Conversational Interfaces for Microtask Crowdsourcing

Conversational interfaces can facilitate human-computer interactions. Whether or not conversational interfaces can improve worker experience and work quality in crowdsourcing marketplaces has remained unanswered. We investigate the suitability of text-based conversational interfaces for microtask crowdsourcing. We designed a rigorous...

Enabling Human Computation through Text-based Conversational Agents

Human Computation (HC) has established itself to be a powerful tool for carrying out certain simple and repetitive tasks in the form of microtasks, which to this day are still difficult for a machine to automate. <br/>With the latest increase in interest in machine learning, HC has similarly gotten more attention as a popular way to acquire...

Embodied Conversational Agent for Mental Health Intervention

Embodied Conversational Agents (ECA) seek to provide a more natural means of interaction for a user through verbal and non-verbal properties of human face-to-face communication. For this reason, these systems are found to bring benefits in different mental health related interventions. However, a key challenge in developing agents to replace the...

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...

Human Aided Bots

A chatbot is an example of a text-based conversational agent. While natural language understanding and machine learning techniques advance rapidly, current fully automated chatbots still struggle to serve their users well. Human intelligence, brought by crowd workers, freelancers or even full-time employees can be embodied in the chatbot logic...

Effective crowdsourced generation of training data for chatbots natural language understanding

Chatbots are text-based conversational agents. Natural Language Understanding (NLU) models are used to extract meaning and intention from user messages sent to chatbots. The user experience of chatbots largely depends on the performance of the NLU model, which itself largely depends on the initial dataset the model is trained with. The training...

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

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVE:<br/>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...

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...

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 ...

Ontology Engineering for the Design and Implementation of Personal Pervasive Lifestyle Support

The PAL project1 is developing an embodied conversational agent (robot and its avatar), and applications for child-agent activities that help children from 8 to 14 years old to acquire the required knowledge, skills, and attitude for adequate diabetes selfmanagement. Formal and informal caregivers can use the PAL system to enhance their...

An Empathic Virtual Buddy for Social Support

Recent years have witnessed a growing interest in employing Embodied Conversational Agents (ECAs) as companions or coaches. These roles are typically performed by humans and require exhibiting certain social behaviors, such as providing social support. For interactions between users and coaching or companion ECAs to become truly social,...

User Validation of an Empathic Virtual Buddy against Cyberbullying

People are able to comfort others by talking about their problems. In our research, we are exploring whether computers can provide social support in a similar manner. Recently, we proposed a design for an empathic virtual buddy that supports victims of cyberbullying. To validate our approach in providing social support and to gather feedback...

Virtual Conversation: Automated Free Speech Dialogue with a Computer Character

Virtual reality exposure therapy (VRET) is already used for treatment of phobias like fear of flying, heights and small places. It is shown to be effective in these areas prompting research into new phobia treatment possibilities. Current papers concerned with social phobia and the use of VRET do not seem to focus on person to person interaction...