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Assessing empathy and managing emotions through interactions with an affective avatar
Esperanza Johnson, Ramón Hervás, Carlos Gutiérrez López de la Franca1
1University of Castilla-La Mancha, Spain.
Health Informatics Journal
|October 4, 2016
Summary
This study introduces an affective avatar to aid communication therapies for social communication disorders. Users found the avatar engaging, logical, and capable of eliciting empathy, paving the way for AI-driven therapeutic tools.
Area of Science:
- Human-Computer Interaction
- Artificial Intelligence
- Psychology
Background:
- Assistive technologies enhance quality of life for individuals with social communication disorders.
- Affective avatars can facilitate social interaction and communication therapies.
Purpose of the Study:
- To design and evaluate an affective avatar for social communication disorder assistance.
- To propose a human-avatar taxonomy for designing affective avatars.
- To assess the avatar's emotional conveyance and user empathy elicitation.
Main Methods:
- Design of an affective avatar for social interaction.
- Evaluation of the avatar with 30 subjects.
- Assessment of emotional expression and empathy.
- Development of a human-avatar taxonomy.
Main Results:
- Users habituated to the avatar after repeated interactions.
- Avatar behavior was perceived as logical by users.
- User interactions elicited affective reactions and emotion mimicry.
- Established preliminary ground truth for empathic avatar interactions.
Conclusions:
- The affective avatar shows promise in assisting communication therapies for social communication disorders.
- User perception and affective responses support the avatar's design and utility.
- Findings contribute to training learning algorithms for social communication disorder evaluation.
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