The impact of owner age on companionship with virtual pets

This paper focuses on issues of interaction with a particular type of mobile information system – virtual pets. It examines the impact of owner age on companionship with virtual pets, and tests the hypothesis that younger virtual pet owners will experience closer companionship with their virtual pet than older owners. This is in response to the marketing stance adopted by virtual pet manufacturers who clearly target younger people as the main consumers of their products. The hypothesis was tested using survey data and companionship was measured using the Comfort from Companion Animals Scale. Support was found for the hypothesis at all definitions of young: there is a highly significant difference between the companionship offered by a virtual pet to young people than that offered to older people. Although this finding generally indicates that virtual pets offer more, in terms of emotional-engagement, to younger people than older people we suggest that much more research in this area is needed in order to better understand the phenomenal commercial success of virtual pets. In addition, there is an abundance of literature examining the benefits of owning real pets. It is possible that a virtual pet might be able to deliver some of these, and given our result, it is likely that virtual pets will be more likely to bring these benefits to young people rather than to old peopl

How the agent’s gender influence users’ evaluation of a QA system

In this paper we present the results of a pilot study investigating the effects of agents’ gender-ambiguous vs. gender-marked look on the perceived interaction quality of a multimodal question answering system. Eight test subjects interacted with three system agents, each having a feminine, masculine or gender-ambiguous look. The subjects were told each agent was representing a differently configured system. In fact, they were interacting with the same system. In the end, the subjects filled in an evaluation questionnaire and participated in an in-depth qualitative interview. The results showed that the user evaluation seemed to be influenced by the agent’s gender look: the system represented by the feminine agent achieved on average the highest evaluation scores. On the other hand, the system represented by the gender-ambiguous agent was systematically lower rated. This outcome might be relevant for an appropriate agent look, especially since many designers tend to develop gender-ambiguous characters for interactive interfaces to match various users’ preferences. However, additional empirical evidence is needed in the future to confirm our findings

Facebook ™: Engagement for transition and retention beyond the curriculum

To plan for the future, we need to take account of emerging trends and find innovative ways to utilise them to engage students beyond the curriculum. In the rapidly changing world of technological enablements, online communities offer an opportunity to engage with students via a medium that many are already comfortable using. Research in socio-linguistically based cultural studies (Thompson, 1984) suggests that establishing a communicative context, which enables the participants to feel on a level playing field, that is, away from the institutional constraints, can elicit a more open exchange of information. This paper suggests that this leads to a greater engagement with students and offers the potential to intervene in ‘at risk’ cases. In 2008, Murdoch University trialled using Facebook™ as a means of engaging with new students, with some interesting and surprising outcomes. This paper will discuss some of the outcomes, the potential and analyse some of the theoretical underpinnings, which prompted our decision to experiment with online communities outside of the university structure

Attention modulates the specificity of automatic imitation to human actors

The perception of actions performed by others activates one’s own motor system. Recent studies disagree as to whether this effect is specific to actions performed by other humans, an issue complicated by differences in perceptual salience between human and non-human stimuli. We addressed this issue by examining the automatic imitation of actions stimulated by viewing a virtual, computer generated, hand. This stimulus was held constant across conditions, but participants’ attention to the virtualness of the hand was manipulated by informing some participants during instructions that they would see a “computer-generated model of a hand,” while making no mention of this to others. In spite of this attentional manipulation, participants in both conditions were generally aware of the virtualness of the hand. Nevertheless, automatic imitation of the virtual hand was significantly reduced––but not eliminated––when participants were told they would see a virtual hand. These results demonstrate that attention modulates the “human bias” of automatic imitation to non-human actors

Disclosure with an emotional intelligent synthetic partner

To talk and write about one’s feelings has a beneficial effect on one’s physical and psychological health. More specifically, conversation evoking disclosure of emotions and traumatic events has a positive effect on one’s health, rather than chitchat. Astronauts on a mission are exposed to stressful situations, without the presence of a therapist or even comfortable communication with home base. Given that it is important one is able to express one’s feelings regularly, this situation clearly is a threat to success of enduring space missions. In this paper we discuss using an emotional intelligent relational agent to help solve this problem