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Interpersonal relationships progress through stages, beginning with awareness and moving toward mutuality, where emotional connections deepen. While many relationships remain at moderate levels of mutuality, deeper connections form through self-disclosure, trust, and interdependence.Self-DisclosureSelf-disclosure involves revealing personal information, starting with surface-level details and gradually progressing to more intimate content. As trust grows, individuals feel more comfortable...
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Related Experiment Video

Updated: Jun 4, 2026

Virtual Agent for Real-Time Motivational Interviewing by Integrating Adaptive Nonverbal Behavior and Language Models
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Maintaining Engagement in Long-term Interventions with Relational Agents.

Timothy Bickmore1, Daniel Schulman, Langxuan Yin

  • 1Northeastern University College of Computer and Information Science, 360 Huntington Ave, WVH202, Boston, MA 02115.

Applied Artificial Intelligence : AAI
|February 15, 2011
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Summary

Designing engaging virtual humans for long-term use is challenging. This study explored agent behaviors to maintain user engagement in virtual human applications through controlled experiments.

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Area of Science:

  • Human-Computer Interaction
  • Virtual Agent Design
  • User Engagement Studies

Background:

  • Designing virtual humans for sustained voluntary use presents engagement challenges.
  • Maintaining user interest over extended periods is crucial for virtual agent applications.

Purpose of the Study:

  • To review engagement concepts across disciplines.
  • To investigate factors influencing long-term user engagement with virtual agents.
  • To assess the impact of agent behavior on user engagement.

Main Methods:

  • Literature review of engagement theories.
  • Development of a platform for human-virtual agent interaction studies.
  • Conducting two longitudinal randomized controlled experiments.

Main Results:

  • Identified key issues in designing for long-term virtual human use.
  • Demonstrated the effect of specific agent behavior manipulations on user engagement.
  • Quantified the impact of agent behavior on sustained user interaction.

Conclusions:

  • Agent behavior significantly influences long-term user engagement in virtual human applications.
  • The study provides a framework and empirical evidence for designing more engaging virtual agents.
  • Findings inform the development of virtual agents for applications requiring sustained user interaction.