A theoretical and practical approach to a persuasive agent model for change behaviour in oral care and hygiene

There is an increased use of the persuasive agent in behaviour change interventions due to the agent‘s features of sociable, reactive, autonomy, and proactive. However, many interventions have been unsuccessful, particularly in the domain of oral care. The psychological reactance has been identified as one of the major reasons for these unsuccessful behaviour change interventions. This study proposes a formal persuasive agent model that leads to psychological reactance reduction in order to achieve an improved behaviour change intervention in oral care and hygiene. Agent-based simulation methodology is adopted for the development of the proposed model. Evaluation of the model was conducted in two phases that include verification and validation. The verification process involves simulation trace and stability analysis. On the other hand, the validation was carried out using user-centred approach by developing an agent-based application based on belief-desire-intention architecture. This study contributes an agent model which is made up of interrelated cognitive and behavioural factors. Furthermore, the simulation traces provide some insights on the interactions among the identified factors in order to comprehend their roles in behaviour change intervention. The simulation result showed that as time increases, the psychological reactance decreases towards zero. Similarly, the model validation result showed that the percentage of respondents‘ who experienced psychological reactance towards behaviour change in oral care and hygiene was reduced from 100 percent to 3 percent. The contribution made in this thesis would enable agent application and behaviour change intervention designers to make scientific reasoning and predictions. Likewise, it provides a guideline for software designers on the development of agent-based applications that may not have psychological reactance

Rhetorical moves and identity performance in online child sexual abuse interactions

Online child sexual abuse (OCSA) is a pervasive problem facilitated by the anonymity afforded to offenders online. From a largely social constructionist perspective, this thesis explores linguistic expressions of identity by participants across a range of OCSA interactions, including offenders and suspected offenders, victims, and undercover police officers. The thesis is structured around three individual studies, each involving a different abusive interaction type. Each study employs Swales’ (1981; 1990) move analysis framework, exploring how participants use rhetorical moves as a resource for identity performance. Study 1 concerns a convicted offender who strategically cycled through numerous adopted personas when interacting with victims online. It considers his performance of various identity positions through his use of rhetorical moves across different personas. One persona is found to diverge significantly from the rest, and is identified as a possible reflection of the offender’s ‘home identity’. Study 2 considers interactions between suspected offenders and undercover police officers posing as offenders. It compares the participants’ move use and explores linguistic realisations of supportive exchanges, finding that aside a few notable differences, undercover officers perform the offender identity similarly to genuine suspected offenders. Study 3 explores dark web forum posts authored by ‘newbies’ attempting to join existing online communities of suspected offenders. It examines the identity positions performed in the posts and considers how positions of competence and expertise contribute to the persuasive process of seeking membership into online offending communities. Taking findings from these studies, the thesis discusses the possible contributions of move analysis to OCSA research and how rhetorical moves are used as a resource for identity performance, and offers an approach to identity analysis based on rhetorical moves. It concludes by arguing for move analysis as a useful goal-centred approach to identity investigation and describes potential implications of this work for law-enforcement, education and research

What Does Playing Games Teach Us About a Student\u27s Ethical Life?

Most of our students play video games. A substantial percentage of our students is required to take a computer ethics course before graduation. Both ACM and ABET require some form of computer ethics. This paper addresses gaming ethics as a subset of the computer ethics course. Specifically it considers the case of Grand Theft Auto (GTA), one of the most successful and most criticized game franchises. Through interviews with computer science students the study looks at mainstream reaction to GTA and finds that computer science students, probably one of the more sophisticated groups of gamers, have sometimes surprising ethical views about the GTA franchise. What implications does this have for the study of computer ethics

Computational models of social and emotional turn-taking for embodied conversational agents: a review

The emotional involvement of participants in a conversation not only shows in the words they speak and in the way they speak and gesture but also in their turn-taking behavior. This paper reviews research into computational models of embodied conversational agents. We focus on models for turn-taking management and (social) emotions. We are particularly interested in how in these models emotions of the agent itself and those of the others in uence the agent's turn-taking behavior and vice versa how turn-taking behavior of the partner is perceived by the agent itself. The system of turn-taking rules presented by Sacks, Schegloff and Jefferson (1974) is often a starting point for computational turn-taking models of conversational agents. But emotions have their own rules besides the "one-at-a-time" paradigm of the SSJ system. It turns out that almost without exception computational models of turn-taking behavior that allow "continuous interaction" and "natural turntaking" do not model the underlying psychological, affective, attentional and cognitive processes. They are restricted to rules in terms of a number of supercially observable cues. On the other hand computational models for virtual humans that are based on a functional theory of social emotion do not contain explicit rules on how social emotions affect turn-taking behavior or how the emotional state of the agent is affected by turn-taking behavior of its interlocutors. We conclude with some preliminary ideas on what an architecture for emotional turn-taking should look like and we discuss the challenges in building believable emotional turn-taking agents

Discourse in Action

From emails relating to adoption over the Internet to discussions in the airline cockpit, the spoken or written texts we produce can have significant social consequences. The area of Mediated Discourse Analysis considers texts in their social and cultural contexts to explore the actions individuals take with texts - and the consequences of those actions. Discourse in Action: brings together leading scholars from around the world in the area of Mediated Discourse Analysis reveals ways in which its theory and methodology can be used in research into contemporary social situations explores real situations and draws on real data in each chapter shows how analysis of texts in their social contexts broadens our understanding of the real world. Taken together, the chapters provide a comprehensive overview to the field and present a range of current studies that address some of the most important questions facing students and researchers in linguistics, education, communication studies and other fields

Modelling a conversational agent (Botocrates) for promoting critical thinking and argumentation skills

Students in higher education institutions are often advised to think critically, yet without being guided to do so. The study investigated the use of a conversational agent (Botocrates) for supporting critical thinking and academic argumentation skills. The overarching research questions were: can a conversational agent support critical thinking and academic argumentation skills? If so, how? The study was carried out in two stages: modelling and evaluating Botocrates' prototype. The prototype was a Wizard-of-Oz system where a human plays Botocrates' role by following a set of instructions and knowledge-base to guide generation of responses. Both stages were conducted at the School of Education at the University of Leeds. In the first stage, the study analysed 13 logs of online seminars in order to define the tasks and dialogue strategies needed to be performed by Botocrates. The study identified two main tasks of Botocrates: providing answers to students' enquiries and engaging students in the argumentation process. Botocrates’ dialogue strategies and contents were built to achieve these two tasks. The novel theoretical framework of the ‘challenge to explain’ process and the notion of the ‘constructive expansion of exchange structure’ were produced during this stage and incorporated into Botocrates’ prototype. The aim of the ‘challenge to explain’ process is to engage users in repeated and constant cycles of reflective thinking processes. The ‘constructive expansion of exchange structure’ is the practical application of the ‘challenge to explain’ process. In the second stage, the study used the Wizard-of-Oz (WOZ) experiments and interviews to evaluate Botocrates’ prototype. 7 students participated in the evaluation stage and each participant was immediately interviewed after chatting with Botocrates. The analysis of the data gathered from the WOZ and interviews showed encouraging results in terms of students’ engagement in the process of argumentation. As a result of the role of ‘critic’ played by Botocrates during the interactions, users actively and positively adopted the roles of explainer, clarifier, and evaluator. However, the results also showed negative experiences that occurred to users during the interaction. Improving Botocrates’ performance and training users could decrease users’ unsuccessful and negative experiences. The study identified the critical success and failure factors related to achieving the tasks of Botocrates

The effect of out-of-school media contact on language attitudes in multilingual adolescents: a complex psychosociolinguistic system

Esta tesis analiza las actitudes lingüísticas de los adolescentes multilingües en función de su contacto con los idiomas a través de los medios de comunicación. El estudio utiliza la teoría de Sistemas Dinámicos y Complejos para proponer un sistema multilingüe psico-sociolingüístico integrado y demostrar la manera en que los subcomponentes de este sistema funcionan en conjunto. Los participantes del estudio son 152 estudiantes de ESO de la provincia de Castellón. Los instrumentos utilizados son un cuestionario y una serie de entrevistas orales. Los resultados demuestran que el contacto con los medios de comunicación en inglés y en catalán tiene un impacto significativo en las actitudes lingüísticas, caracterizado por la interconectividad compleja y la susceptibilidad a cambios a lo largo del tiempo. Además, los adolescentes muestran una gran voluntad en la creación y el uso de los entornos mediáticos multilingües, y un rango de motivos emocionales y pragmáticos respecto a sus prácticas lingüísticas multilingües y multimodales.This thesis analyzes the linguistic attitudes of multilingual adolescents in terms of their contact with languages ​​through the media. The study uses Complex Dynamic Systems Theory to propose an integrated psycho-sociolinguistic multilingual system and demonstrate how the subcomponents of the system work together. The study participants are 152 obligatory secondary education (ESO) students in the province of Castellon. The instruments used are a questionnaire and a series of oral interviews. The results show that media contact in English and Catalan has a significant impact on language attitudes, characterized by complex interconnectivity and time sensitivity. In addition, adolescents show great agency in the creation and use of multilingual media environments and also a range of emotional and pragmatic reasons regarding their multilingual and multimodal practices