Affect-Sensitive Virtual Standardized Patient Interface System
Abstract
Virtual Standardized Patients (VSPs) are advanced conversational virtual human agents that have been applied to training of clinicians. These interactive agents portray standardized patient scenarios involving VSPs with clinical or physical conditions. VSPs are capable of verbal and nonverbal interaction (receptive and expressive communication) with a clinician in an effort to enhance differential diagnosis of psychiatric disorders and teach interpersonal skills. This chapter describes the design and development of both software to create social interaction modules on a VSP platform and individualized affective models for affect recognition. This author describes clinically relevant scenarios for affect elicitation and protocols for reliable affect recognition. Further, there is an elucidation of a VSP interface system that has the capacity to monitor the trainee s affective response using physiological signals. Research findings will be summarized from studies on (1) the usability and applicability of VSPs with training clinicians on various mental health disorders (e.g., adolescent male with conduct disorder; adolescent female who has recently been physically traumatized); and (2) preliminary use of the affect-sensitive system to systematically assess and manipulate aspects of VSPs to more fully develop cognitive and affective models of virtual humans with pathological characteristics.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- Jan 01, 2011
- Accession Number
- AD1170795
Entities
People
- Thomas D Parsons
Organizations
- University of Southern California