Show Some Respect! The Impact of Technological Factors on the Treatment of Virtual Humans in Conversational Training Systems Kyle Johnsen Faculty of Engineering University of Georgia
Brent Rossen†, Diane Beck‡, Benjamin Lok†
D. Scott Lind
†Department of Computer and Information Science and Engineering ‡School of Pharmacy University of Florida
Department of Surgery Medical College of Georgia
ABSTRACT Understanding the human-computer interface factors that influence users’ behavior with virtual humans will enable more effective human-virtual human encounters. This paper presents evidence of a significant relationship between behavioral indicators of respect by users and virtual reality technology factors. Moreover, we found this evidence in an application domain where respect for others is fundamentally important, health professional education. KEYWORDS: Virtual humans, embodied agents, display comparison, medical education, immersive virtual environments INDEX TERMS: I.3.7 [Computer Graphics]: Three-Dimensional Graphics and Realism Virtual Reality. H.5.2 [Information Systems and Presentation]: User Interfaces – Evaluation 1
INTRODUCTION
Showing respect for others is one of the fundamental drivers of successful human relationships. As virtual humans (VHs) become ubiquitous, research on human-VH relationships must address this important issue. Our goal in this work is to understand how the choices developers make in virtual environment technology affect the respect shown by participants to VHs. In particular, this work may guide virtual reality developers in selecting a display and rendering scale based on task goals. A prototypical aspect of immersive virtual reality is that the virtual environment appears to the user as being life-size scale (1:1). In the case of spatial tasks, life-size proportions may assist users in transferring learned knowledge from the virtual environment to the real environment or benefit application task performance in the virtual environment. However, when the task or knowledge is not spatial in nature, it is less clear how life-size proportions create a more effective virtual environment. For example, how does scale affect the impressions the user forms of a VH? This work evaluated the effect of life-size proportions for a new class of virtual reality applications, VH experiences. The VH in a VH experience not only occupies a virtual environment, the VH is the focus of user interaction. A conversation simulator is a common example of a VH experience; the conversation with the VH is the user’s task. Many existing research and commercial
systems fall into this category, such as the Mission Rehearsal Exercise trainer[1], the MACK system [2], the InterPersonal Simulator [3], and the Virtual Standardized Patient [4]. To generate a life-size VH relative to the user, VH experiences often utilize large screen displays (projectors or large-screen televisions). These large-screen displays show full-body life-size scale VHs. The use of a large-screen display may be justified from a cognitive perspective; researchers in media psychology have shown that, for passive media (e.g. television, movies), there is a strong positive correlation between imagery size and emotional response. People have a more powerful reaction to imagery on large screen displays [5]. Large screens also create a higher level of arousal and can amplify the effect of arousing imagery [6]. Furthermore, large screen displays motivate people to evaluate images of other people more favorably [7]. It seems reasonable then, that larger VH agents would be more engaging to the user. For the purposes of this evaluation, we considered the impact of VH scale on the emotional dimension of health provider-patient interaction, and more specifically – respect. One of the main components of respect towards patients is empathy. Empathy is the understanding by a person of another’s emotions. Students do not get sufficient exposure and feedback on emotionally charged patient experiences (e.g. a patient afraid he may have cancer). Virtual human experiences can provide additional exposure, albeit at the potential risk of reduced emotional engagement. Thus, it is important to evaluate how design decisions can affect empathy in a VH experience. Working with pharmacy educators, a VH experience was developed that simulates a 35-year-old Caucasian male patient, VIC (Virtual Interactive Character) complaining about increasing pain in his abdominal region for the past month. VIC is taking a variety of medications for diabetes, hypothyroidism, and hypertension. Before the physician sees VIC, the studentpharmacist is asked to perform a patient interview. The user study discussed in this manuscript evaluated the design decision of display size and corresponding VH scale (collectively referred to as display configuration). Two
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IEEE Virtual Reality 2010 20 - 24 March, Waltham, Massachusetts, USA 978-1-4244-6238-4/10/$26.00 ©2010 IEEE
Figure 1 The same VH displayed on a plasma television (Top) and a monitor (Bottom). Real pill bottles enhance the experience. A video camera records the experience for behavioral coding.
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configurations were tested: • Configuration PTV- A plasma TV (42” diagonal oriented vertically) displayed the VH at life-size scale relative to the user • Configuration MON- A typical LCD monitor (22” diagonal) displayed the VH at a smaller than life-size scale relative to the user. The experiment used a standard two-group design with display configuration as the independent variable between the groups and a Wizard of Oz operator to control the VH agent. For the experiment, thirty-nine students (12 men, 27 women) from the pharmacy school at the University of Florida were recruited. The goal of the study design was to isolate how the scale of the VH (afforded by the display type) affected respect shown to the VH. To measure respect, we created a scale consisting of a set of related behavioral measures: empathy, pleasantness, naturalness, and engagement. These constructs are often associated with the pharmacy task, but all reflect the somewhat difficult to describe higher level construct of respect. The constructs were measured by five video raters who watched recordings of illustrative segments, called critical moments, for each participant. Two critical moments occurred: the first at the beginning of the interview when the patient asks to speak to the doctor instead of the pharmacist and one approximately seven minutes into each interview, at which point the patient asks the pharmacist “Could this be cancer?” Participants were judged based on their actions in response to each moment.
REFERENCES
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Figure 3 Results for Moment 2 (“Could this be cancer?”). The dashed lines are +/- one standard deviation * (p
