Title: Immersive Virtual Humans for Interpersonal Skills Education
1Immersive Virtual Humans for Interpersonal Skills
Education
- Benjamin Lok
- Virtual Experiences Research Group
- Computer and Information Science and Engineering
Department - College of Engineering
- April 2nd, 2007
2Outline and Goals
- Virtual Humans
- Definitions
- Technology
- Previous Work
- Research Results
- Virtual Patients
- Psychology studies
- Getting involved
3Virtual Humans
- Virtual Humans computer representations of
humans - Application domains
- Games
- Movies
- Simulation
4Virtual Humans
- Virtual Humans computer representations of
humans - Interfaces
- Output
- Monitors
- Projects
- Head-Mounted Displays
- Haptics
- Input
- Keyboard/Mouse
- Speech
- Gestures
- Higher Level Concepts
- Eye gaze
- Empathy
5Virtual Humans in Therapy
- Simulating social situations
- Virtual Humans and fear of public speaking
Pertaub 2004 - Virtual practice reduces anxiety or failures in
reality - Treatment validated with traditional methods
- Other situations
- Anxiety disorder
- Social phobias
- Posttraumatic Stress Disorder
6Virtual Humans in Training
- Training
- ICT - military leadership training Hill 2003
- Americas Army
7Virtual Humans in Medicine
- Traditional approaches Bearman 2003
- Choose Your Own Adventure
- Dialogue systems
- Mannequins
- Human Patient Simulator Meurs 1997
- Training
- JUST VR Ponder 2002
- Emergencies
- Virtual Standardized Patient Hubal 2000
- Practice interactions
- Virtual Surgeries
8Immersive Virtual Characters for Educating
Medical Communication Skills
- A. Deladisma, D. S. Lind
- Dept of Surgical Oncology (Medical College of
Georgia) - K. Johnsen, A. Raij, B. Rossen, B. Lok
- Dept of Comp and Info Science and Eng (College of
Eng) - M. Cohen, A. Stevens
- Dept of Surgery (College of Med)
- J. Cendan
- Dept of Community Health and Family Med (College
of Med) R. Ferdig
9Can Virtual Humans Enable
10Project Description
- Simulate a standardized patient encounter
- Allow repeated interaction with an Immersive,
interactive virtual patient in a constrained
scenario - Virtual patient, DIANA
- Virtual instructor, VIC
- Communication skills
- Interpersonal Simulator
11- Play Video
- Things to look for interaction modalities
12Why VHs?
- Standardization
- Twiddle one thing
- Abnormal findings
- Repetition
- Feedback
13System
- Low Cost
- lt 8,000(USD)
- COTSComponents
- Potential
- Every Hospital
14Natural Interaction Input
- No Keyboard, No Mouse
- Speech Recognition
- Dragon Naturally Speaking 8 Pro
- Accuracy 90 with 10 minutes training
- 70 match to database
- Track Communication Cues
- Non-Verbal
- Track head gaze
- Track left hand
- Track body lean
- Verbal
- Inflection
- Jargon
- Gesture Recognition
- Pointing, handshake
15Natural Interaction Output
- DIANA and VIC look at user
- Life-size characters
- Animation
- Hand gestures
- Head movement
- Perspective-Correct Rendering
- Why this works
- Does not rely on complete sentences
- Constrained scenario
- Students trained on specific questions
16Studies
- Project started January 2004
- (-March 2007) Ten studies
- n 150
- Testing Centers
- Harrell Center at UF
- Medical College of Georgia
- Keele University, School of Pharmacy
- Focus
- Establish validity
- Study similarity/differences
17Studies
- 2004
- April Project initiated
- August Prototype (n7) UF
- October Experts (n3) UF
- December Pilot Test (n10) UF
- 2005
- June Two Institutions (n16) UF/MCG
- July VP vs SP (n16, n8) UF/MCG
- October Cultural Bias (n16) MCG
- October Class Integration (n33) UF
- 2006
- November (n12) MCG, (n15) Keele
- 2007
- February (n16) MCG
- Testing Centers
- Harrell Center at UF
- Medical College of Georgia
- Keele University, School of Pharmacy
18VP ? SP
- How is experiencing an interpersonal scenario
with a virtual person similar to and different
from experiencing an interpersonal scenario
with a real person? - Clearly different
- But in what important ways?
- The study asks
- Are post-encounter impressions similar?
- Are empathy and other emotions and attitudes
similarly expressed? - Which social constructs are followed?
- These questions must be explored to
- Determine the extent to which interpersonal
scenarios can be simulated with virtual humans - Identify how component technologies need to
improve to enable effective interpersonal virtual
human systems
19Behavioral Measures
- Empathy
- Empathetic moment Im scared, can you help
me? - Expressed the same and same of times (SP
2.2, VP 1.3) - But
- Appears less genuine (very robotic)
- Conversation flow is rapid-fire
- Confirmatory phrases statistically different (SP
20, VP 3.5) - Overall experiences similar
- Questions asked
- Global measures
- Education goals met
- Students rated educational merits similarly
- Students rated difficulty similarly
- Global measures of realism do not work
- Battery of specific measures more accurate
- Practice tool in addition to SPs
20Current Work
- Classroom incorporation
- Technology evaluation
- Visualization
- Bias
- Race/Ethnicity
- Gender
- Age
- Weight
- Mixed Reality patients
- Abnormal findings
- Physiological Measures
- Anxiety (Sexual History)
21Current Work
- Classroom incorporation
- Technology evaluation
- Visualization
- Bias
- Race/Ethnicity
- Gender
- Age
- Weight
- Mixed Reality patients
- Abnormal findings
- Physiological Measures
- Anxiety (Sexual History)
22Pain Studies
- Mike Robinson, Clinical and Health Psychology
- Perception of Pain
- 1 Independent Variable
23What we think we know about VHs
- Interaction with a virtual human is validated.
Expert observer ratings of virtual patient
interactions are correlated (r0.49) with
standardized patient interactions. - Conversation content with a virtual patient is
similar to that with a standardized patient, even
if the method be might more robotic. - Although the interaction with a VP is not
identical to a SP, some educational objectives
can be achieved. High level concepts, e.g.
empathy, require further research. - Natural interaction with virtual humans is
important for teaching communication skills. - People interacting with VHs can exhibit
subconscious/involuntary responses - Gaze
- People interacting with VHs can exhibit socially
conditioned responses - Sneeze
- Empathy
24Replicating Classic Human-Human Psychology Studies
- Virtual Humans allow conducting studies that are
challenging - Ethically
- Bailenson
- Logistically
- Understanding the impact of VHs
25Milgram Obedience
- Slater University College of London
- Virtual Reprise of the Stanley Milgram Obedience
Experiments - Mel Slater, Antley, Davison, Swapp, Guger,
Barker, Pistrang, Sanchez-Vives
26Blascovich Social Facilitation
- Zanbaka, et. al., UNC-Charlotte
- Study Design
- Task (Easy or Hard)
- Observer (Human or Virtual Human)
- Virtual Human Variables
- Gender
- Human vs. Alien
- Results
- Effects similar to original study
- Effects not as strong
27Asch Conformity
- Harold Rodriguez (junior)
- Can virtual humans cause you to conform?
- What if you thought people were controlling the
virtual human?
28Virtual Experiences Research Group
- PhD Students
- Kyle Johnsen, Aaron Kotranza, John Quarels
- Andrew Raij, Xiyong Wang, Brent Rossen
- Undergraduates
- Joshua Horton, Harold Rodriguez
- Funding
- National Science Foundation, University of
Florida Colleges of Engineering and Medicine,
Medical College of Georgia, Keele University,
School of Pharmacy
29Join Us!
- We need your expertise!
- Studying the current system
- Future research
- Thank you!
- http//www.cise.ufl.edu/research/vegroup
- Questions?