Evolution of the Virtual Human: From Term to Potential Application in Psychiatry

Virtual reality applications in mental health have traditionally involved the creation of virtual environments that acted as provocative agents either for the purposes of the identification of disorders or their treatment. There is infrequent mention of the utilization of "virtual humans" despite the obvious significance of humans within our lives. More broadly, the term Virtual Human is frequently used in a number of contexts extending from its use as a term, modifying anything that needs to be modernized, to the application of 3D animated figures that exist in virtual realities. These applications refer to quite different phenomena in very different contexts leading to a high level of ambiguity and uncertainty when referring to virtual humans. In the following, the various applications of the term virtual human will be reviewed and critiqued through its most frequent applications, in various fields. They will be reviewed in an ascending manner from the least human of application to the most. Finally, a definition will be offered reflecting the potential complexity of the term as it reflects the expression of our most human factors, and how these are needed in the development of a model of a virtual human in psychiatry.Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/63235/1/10949310050078751.pd

CO-BOT: An Intelligent Technique for Designing a Chatbot for Initial COVID-19 Test

The coronavirus (nCOV-19), which was discovered, has now spread around the world. However, managing the flow of a large number of cases has proven to be a significant issue for hospitals or healthcare professionals. It is becoming increasingly challenging to speak with a medical expert after the epidemic’s initial wave has passed, particularly in rural areas. Thus, it becomes clear that a Chatbot that is well-designed and implemented can assist patients who are located far away by advocating preventive actions, and viral updates in various cities, and minimising the psychological harm brought on by dread. In this study, a sophisticated Chabot’s design for diagnosing individuals who have been exposed to COVID-19 is presented, along with recommendations for immediate safety measures. Additionally, when symptoms grow serious, this virtual assistant makes contact with specialised medical professionals

Identifying key factors to distinguish artificial and human avatars in the metaverse: insights from software professionals

The Metaverse comprises a network of interconnected 3D virtual worlds, poised to become the primary gateway for future online experiences. These experiences hinge upon the use of avatars, participants' virtual counterparts capable of exhibiting human-like non-verbal behaviors, such as gestures, walking, dancing, and social interaction. Discerning between human and artificial avatars becomes crucial as the concept gains prominence. Advances in artificial intelligence have facilitated the creation of virtual human-like entities, underscoring the importance of distinguishing between virtual agents and human characters. This paper investigates the factors differentiating human and virtual participants within the Metaverse environment. A semi-structured interview approach was employed, with data collected from software practitioners (N=10). Our preliminary findings indicate that response speed, adaptability to unforeseen events, and recurring scenarios play significant roles in determining whether an entity in the virtual world is a human or an intelligent agent

Attention allocation in complementary joint action: How joint goals affect spatial orienting

When acting jointly, individuals often attend and respond to the same object or spatial location in complementary ways (e.g., when passing a mug, one person grasps its handle with a precision grip; the other receives it with a whole-hand grip). At the same time, the spatial relation between individuals’ actions affects attentional orienting: one is slower to attend and respond to locations another person previously acted upon than to alternate locations (“social inhibition of return”, social IOR). Achieving joint goals (e.g., passing a mug), however, often requires complementary return responses to a co-actor’s previous location. This raises the question of whether attentional orienting, and hence the social IOR, is affected by the (joint) goal our actions are directed at. The present study addresses this question. Participants responded to cued locations on a computer screen, taking turns with a virtual co-actor. They pursued either an individual goal or performed complementary actions with the co-actor, in pursuit of a joint goal. Four experiments showed that the social IOR was significantly modulated when participant and co-actor pursued a joint goal. This suggests that attentional orienting is affected not only by the spatial but also by the social relation between two agents’ actions. Our findings thus extend research on interpersonal perception-action effects, showing that the way another agent’s perceived action shapes our own depends on whether we share a joint goal with that agent

The doctor’s digital double: how warmth, competence, and animation promote adherence intention

Background Each year, patient nonadherence to treatment advice costs the US healthcare system more than $300 billion and results in 250,000 deaths. Developing virtual consultations to promote adherence could improve public health while cutting healthcare costs and usage. However, inconsistencies in the realism of computer-animated humans may cause them to appear eerie, a phenomenon termed the uncanny valley. Eeriness could reduce a virtual doctor’s credibility and patients’ adherence. Methods In a 2 × 2 × 2 between-groups posttest-only experiment, 738 participants played the role of a patient in a hypothetical virtual consultation with a doctor. The consultation varied in the doctor’s Character (good or poor bedside manner), Outcome (received a fellowship or sued for malpractice), and Depiction (a recorded video of a real human actor or of his 3D computer-animated double). Character, Outcome, and Depiction were designed to manipulate the doctor’s level of warmth, competence, and realism, respectively. Results Warmth and competence increased adherence intention and consultation enjoyment, but realism did not. On the contrary, the computer-animated doctor increased adherence intention and consultation enjoyment significantly more than the doctor portrayed by a human actor. We propose that enjoyment of the animated consultation caused the doctor to appear warmer and more real, compensating for his realism inconsistency. Expressed as a path model, this explanation fit the data. Discussion The acceptance and effectiveness of the animation should encourage the development of virtual consultations, which have advantages over creating content with human actors including ease of scenario revision, internationalization, localization, personalization, and web distribution

PRE-SERVICE TEACHER TRAINING EXPERIENCES VIEWED AS A CULTURAL ACTIVITY

What are the experiences of career-changing pre-service middle school teachers undergoing a group-based activity as part of their training? This series of studies explored two aspects of answering this question. In the first manuscript, a methodology of a novel virtual phenomenology interview technique attempts to determine the influence of a virtual world interviewer compared to a traditional face-to-face setting. While syntactical and other significant differences were found, there was no significant difference found comparing meaning units derived from both settings. In the second manuscript, these meaning units were analyzed to create an essence of the experience for the study\u27s participants, using a modified version of Moustakas\u27 (1994) phenomenology technique viewed through the lens of Cultural Historical Activity Theory (Engeström, 1987). The transcripts of participants were analyzed using this phenomenological technique yielded five meaning themes: Teamwork Function, Grade Orientation, Assignment Structure Conflict, Theory versus Practice Divergence, and Tool for Future Practice. Tensions within the elements of the activity system were identified from the interview transcripts and examined. These findings were used to create a composite textural description, a composite structural description, explained using a graphic depiction of knotworking (Engeström, 1999), and a narrative essence of the experience. A conclusion of both studies, noting a summary of the findings, implications for teacher education, limitations of the studies, and recommendations for future research is also presented

Influence of Selected Factors on a Counselor\u27s Attention Level to and Counseling Performance with a Virtual Human in a Virtual Counseling Session

Virtual humans serve as role-players in social skills training environments simulating situational face-to-face conversations. Previous research indicates that virtual humans in instructional roles can increase a learner\u27s engagement and motivation towards the training. Left unaddressed is if the learner is looking at the virtual human as one would in a human-to-human, face-to-face interaction. Using a modified version of the Emergent Leader Immersive Training Environment (ELITE-Lite), this study tracks visual attention and other behavior of 120 counselor trainees counseling a virtual human role-playing counselee. Specific study elements include: (1) the counselor\u27s level of visual attention toward the virtual counselee; (2) how changes to the counselor\u27s viewpoint may influence the counselor\u27s visual focus; and (3) how levels of the virtual human\u27s behavior may influence the counselor\u27s visual focus. Secondary considerations include aspects of learner performance, acceptance of the virtual human, and impacts of age and rank. Result highlights indicate that counselor visual attentional behavior could be separated into two phases: when the virtual human was speaking and when not speaking. When the virtual human is speaking, the counselor\u27s primary visual attention is on the counselee, but is also split toward pre-scripted responses required for the training session. During the non-speaking phase, the counselor\u27s visual focus was on pre-scripted responses required for training. Some of the other findings included that participants did not consider this to be like a conversation with a human, but they indicated acceptance of the virtual human as a partner with the training environment and they considered the simulation to be a useful experience. Additionally, the research indicates behavior may differ due to age or rank. Future study and design considerations for enhancements to social skills training environments are provided

Affective and Human-Like Virtual Agents

In Artificial Intelligence (AI) one of the technological goals is to build intelligent systems that not only perform human level tasks efficiently, but can also simulate and exhibit human-like behaviour. As the emphasis of systems is often placed on fulfilling functional requirements, AI systems are only intelligent at a machine level. Affective computing addresses this by developing AI that can recognize, understand and express emotion. In this work, we study the effects and humanness of emotionally cognizant AI agents within the context of the prisoner's dilemma. We leverage machine learning techniques and deep learning models in devising algorithms to map dimensional models of emotion to facial expressions for virtual human displays. Additionally, we utilize distributed representations for words to design a method for constructing affective utterances for a virtual agent in the prisoner's dilemma. We experimentally demonstrate that our methods for affective facial expression and utterance construction can be successfully used in AI applications with virtual humans. Thus, we design and build a prisoner's dilemma game application including the integration of a virtual human. We conduct two experiments to study and evaluate humanness of various agents in the prisoner's dilemma game. We demonstrate the effectiveness of our facial expression and utterance methods and show that an appraisal-based theoretic agent is perceived to be more human-like than baseline models

Design a simulated multimedia enriched immersive learning environment (SMILE) for nursing care of dementia patient

This thesis is to establish a framework to guide the development of a simulated, multimedia-enriched, immersive, learning environment (SMILE) framework. This framework models essential media components used to describe a scenario applied in healthcare (in a dementia context), demonstrates interactions between the components, and enables scalability of simulation implementation. The thesis outcomes also include a simulation system developed in accordance with the guidance framework and a preliminary evaluation through a user study involving ten nursing students and practicioners. The results show that the proposed framework is feasible and effective for designing a simulation system in dementia healthcare training