Participant responses to virtual agents in immersive virtual environments.

This thesis is concerned with interaction between people and virtual humans in the context of highly immersive virtual environments (VEs). Empirical studies have shown that virtual humans (agents) with even minimal behavioural capabilities can have a significant emotional impact on participants of immersive virtual environments (IVEs) to the extent that these have been used in studies of mental health issues such as social phobia and paranoia. This thesis focuses on understanding the impact on the responses of people to the behaviour of virtual humans rather than their visual appearance. There are three main research questions addressed. First, the thesis considers what are the key nonverbal behavioural cues used to portray a specific psychological state. Second, research determines the extent to which the underlying state of a virtual human is recognisable through the display of a key set of cues inferred from the behaviour of real humans. Finally, the degree to which a perceived psychological state in a virtual human invokes responses from participants in immersive virtual environments that are similar to those observed in the physical world is considered. These research questions were investigated through four experiments. The first experiment focused on the impact of visual fidelity and behavioural complexity on participant responses by implementing a model of gaze behaviour in virtual humans. The results of the study concluded that participants expected more life-like behaviours from more visually realistic virtual humans. The second experiment investigated the detrimental effects on participant responses when interacting with virtual humans with low behavioural complexity. The third experiment investigated the differences in responses of participants to virtual humans perceived to be in varying emotional states. The emotional states of the virtual humans were portrayed using postural and facial cues. Results indicated that posture does play an important role in the portrayal of affect however the behavioural model used in the study did not fully cover the qualities of body movement associated with the emotions studied. The final experiment focused on the portrayal of affect through the quality of body movement such as the speed of gestures. The effectiveness of the virtual humans was gauged through exploring a variety of participant responses including subjective responses, objective physiological and behavioural measures. The results show that participants are affected and respond to virtual humans in a significant manner provided that an appropriate behavioural model is used

Click-Enter-Send: The Relationship Experiences of People Who are Blind or Visually Impaired in Text-Based Workspaces

Companies have increasingly turned to text-based communications to recruit, hire, and manage a distributed remote workforce. For people who are blind or visually impaired, this movement presents both challenges and opportunities for attaining and retaining employment. Does the potential isolation of telework have a negative effect on workplace relationships for people who are blind or visually impaired? Does participation in text-based workspaces mitigate stereotypes and stigmatization experienced by people with visible disabilities? Using a constructivist grounded theory framework, this study explored how people who are blind or visually impaired experience relationships in text-based workspaces. Building and maintaining social connections and networks is critical for employment success, so understanding the factors at play in text-based workplace communications is key. Interviews with 18 blind or visually impaired professionals revealed a number of ways individuals connected with colleagues, cultivated professional identity, and built extended networks. This happened despite challenges from technologies and organizational processes that failed to account for employees who are visually impaired. This investigation resulted in the development of an emergent theory and a model that can advance policies and practices for employers and for employment training and support programs. This dissertation is available in open access at AURA (https://aura.antioch.edu/) and OhioLINK ETD Center (https://etd.ohiolink.edu/)

Emerging Issues in Occupational Health Psychology

This book compiles the cutting-edge research published in the Special Issue “Emerging Issues in Occupational Health Psychology” (International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health). The articles included in this book use strong and innovative theoretical approaches to provide evidence regarding the importance of working characteristics and resources to promote healthier and more sustainable environments in which employees can be happy and productive

Investigation of virtual worlds as a platform to support healthy aging for older people

Due to the aging of the population in recent years, it is becoming essential to find innovative activities to help the increasing older population maintain an active lifestyle and delay the need for institutionalized care. Virtual worlds, which have many potential values such as in providing social engagement, could be used to support older people in this aspect. Despite this, most research and design of virtual worlds today are based on young users and do not coincide well with the interests and requirements of older people. It is therefore necessary to investigate how virtual worlds can be designed to not only meet the needs of older users but also to provide opportunities for social engagement and support healthy aging. In the first stage of the research, a series of studies were carried out with older virtual world users to investigate their characteristics, interests and activities. This includes a qualitative interview study and an empirical study. Older users were able to develop interpersonal relationships in virtual worlds and were interested in activities which made useful contribution to society or those which allowed them to socialize with people who share similar interests. Next, two experiment studies were carried out, the first to investigate age related differences in virtual social interaction and the second to determine how different factors influence the social interaction experience. Factors such as navigation were found to influence social interaction and the study revealed limitations relating to the usefulness of the avatar. The findings from this thesis helps extend our theoretical understanding of the interactions and activities of older people in virtual worlds and how previously identified concepts regarding virtual social interaction relate to older users. In addition, the findings were also applied into guidelines to aid developers in creating better virtual worlds to facilitate social interaction and healthy aging

Worker and Public Health and Safety

This book on "Worker and Public Health and Safety: Current Views" brings together current scholarly work and opinions in the form of original papers and reviews related to this field of study. It provides important and recent scientific reading as well as topical medical and occupational information and research in areas of immediate relevance, such as chronic and occupational diseases, worker safety and performance, job strain, workload, injuries, accident and errors, risks and management, fitness, burnout, psychological and mental disorders including stress, therapy, job satisfaction, musculoskeletal symptoms and pain, socio-economic factors, dust pollution, pesticides, noise, pathogens, and related areas

Psychology, Learning, Technology

This open access book constitutes the refereed proceedings of 1st International Workshop on Psychology, Learning, Technology, PLT 2022, Foggia, Italy, during January 2022. The 8 full papers presented here were carefully reviewed and selected from 23 submissions. In addition, one invited paper is also included. Psychology, Learning, ad Technology Conference (PLT2022) aims to explore learning paths that incorporate digital technologies in innovative and transformative ways and the improvement of the psychological and relational life. The conference includes topics about the methodology of application of the ICT tools in psychology and education: from blended learning to the application of artificial intelligence in education; from the teaching, learning, and assessment strategies and practices to the new frontiers on Human-Computer Interaction

Human-Machine Communication: Complete Volume. Volume 2

This is the complete volume of HMC Volume 2

Learning Data-Driven Models of Non-Verbal Behaviors for Building Rapport Using an Intelligent Virtual Agent

There is a growing societal need to address the increasing prevalence of behavioral health issues, such as obesity, alcohol or drug use, and general lack of treatment adherence for a variety of health problems. The statistics, worldwide and in the USA, are daunting. Excessive alcohol use is the third leading preventable cause of death in the United States (with 79,000 deaths annually), and is responsible for a wide range of health and social problems. On the positive side though, these behavioral health issues (and associated possible diseases) can often be prevented with relatively simple lifestyle changes, such as losing weight with a diet and/or physical exercise, or learning how to reduce alcohol consumption. Medicine has therefore started to move toward finding ways of preventively promoting wellness, rather than solely treating already established illness. Evidence-based patient-centered Brief Motivational Interviewing (BMI) interven- tions have been found particularly effective in helping people find intrinsic motivation to change problem behaviors after short counseling sessions, and to maintain healthy lifestyles over the long-term. Lack of locally available personnel well-trained in BMI, however, often limits access to successful interventions for people in need. To fill this accessibility gap, Computer-Based Interventions (CBIs) have started to emerge. Success of the CBIs, however, critically relies on insuring engagement and retention of CBI users so that they remain motivated to use these systems and come back to use them over the long term as necessary. Because of their text-only interfaces, current CBIs can therefore only express limited empathy and rapport, which are the most important factors of health interventions. Fortunately, in the last decade, computer science research has progressed in the design of simulated human characters with anthropomorphic communicative abilities. Virtual characters interact using humans’ innate communication modalities, such as facial expressions, body language, speech, and natural language understanding. By advancing research in Artificial Intelligence (AI), we can improve the ability of artificial agents to help us solve CBI problems. To facilitate successful communication and social interaction between artificial agents and human partners, it is essential that aspects of human social behavior, especially empathy and rapport, be considered when designing human-computer interfaces. Hence, the goal of the present dissertation is to provide a computational model of rapport to enhance an artificial agent’s social behavior, and to provide an experimental tool for the psychological theories shaping the model. Parts of this thesis were already published in [LYL+12, AYL12, AL13, ALYR13, LAYR13, YALR13, ALY14]