Lynne Hall

Virtual learning intervention to reduce bullying victimization in primary school: a controlled trial

BACKGROUND Anti-bullying interventions to date have shown limited success in reducing victimization and have rarely been evaluated using a controlled trial design. This study examined the effects of the FearNot! anti-bullying virtual learning intervention on escaping victimization, and reducing overall victimization rates among primary school students using a nonrandomized controlled trial design. The program was designed to enhance the coping skills of children who are known to be, or are likely to be, victimized. METHODS One thousand, one hundred twenty-nine children (mean age 8.9 years) in 27 primary schools across the UK and Germany were assigned to the FearNot! intervention or the waiting control condition. The program consisted of three sessions, each lasting approximately 30 minutes over a three-week period. The participants were assessed on self-report measures of victimization before and one and four weeks after the intervention or the normal curriculum period. RESULTS In the combined sample, baseline victims in the intervention group were more likely to escape victimization at the first follow-up compared with baseline victims in the control group (adjusted RR, 1.41; 95% CI, 1.02-1.81). A dose-response relationship between the amount of active interaction with the virtual victims and escaping victimization was found (adjusted OR, 1.09; 95% CI, 1.003-1.18). Subsample analyses found a significant effect on escaping victimization only to hold for UK children (adjusted RR, 1.90; CI, 1.23-2.57). UK children in the intervention group experienced decreased victimization rates at the first follow-up compared with controls, even after adjusting for baseline victimization, gender and age (adjusted RR, .60; 95% CI, .36-.93). CONCLUSIONS A virtual learning intervention designed to help children experience effective strategies for dealing with bullying had a short-term effect on escaping victimization for a priori identified victims, and a short-term overall prevention effect for UK children.

Emotion recognition abilities and empathy of victims of bullying

Original article can be found at: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/journal/01452134 Copyright Elsevier Ltd. DOI: 10.1016/j.chiabu.2008.11.002

Achieving empathic engagement through affective interaction with synthetic characters

This paper considers affective interactions to achieve empathic engagement with synthetic characters in virtual learning environments, in order to support and induce the expression of empathy in children. The paper presents FearNot!, a school based virtual learning environment, populated by synthetic characters used for personal, social and health education, specifically bullying issues in schools. An empirical study of 345 children aged 8-11 years who interacted with FearNot! is outlined. The results identify that affective interactions resulting in the expression of empathy were increased when children had high levels of belief and interest in character conversations and if they believed that their interactions had an impact on the characters’ behaviour.

Changing Analysts’ Tunes: The Surprising Impact of a New Instrument for Usability Inspection Method Assessment

We describe the impact on analyst performance of an extended problem report format. Previous studies have shown that Heuristic Evaluation can only find a high proportion of actual problems (thoroughness) if multiple analysts are used. However, adding analysts can result in a high proportion of false positives (low validity). We report surprising interim results from a large study that is exploring the DARe model for evaluation method effectiveness. The DARe model relates the effectiveness of an evaluation method to evaluators’ command of discovery and analysis resources. Previous work has shown that Heuristic Evaluation poorly supports problem discovery and analysis: heuristics tend to be inappropriately applied to problem predictions. We developed an extended problem report format to let us study analyst decision making during usability inspection. Our focus was on the quality of insights into analyst behaviour delivered by this extended report format. However, our first use of this format revealed unexpected improvements in validity (false positive reduction) and appropriate heuristic application. We argue that the format has unexpectedly led to more care and caution in problem discovery and elimination, and in heuristic application. Evaluation performance can thus be improved by indirectly ‘fixing the analyst’ via generic fixes to inspection methods. In addition, we provide the first direct evidence of how evaluators use separate discovery and analysis resources during usability inspection.

Designing empathic agents : adults versus kids

An evaluation study of a Virtual Learning Environment populated by synthetic characters for children to explore issues surrounding bullying behaviour is presented. This 225 participant evaluation was carried out with three stakeholder groups, (children, teachers and experts) to examine their attitudes and empathic styles about the characters and storyline believability. Results revealed that children expressed the most favourable views towards the characters and the highest levels of believability towards the bullying storyline. Children were more likely to have an empathic response than adults and found the synthetic characters more realistic and true-to-life.

Implications of gender differences for the development of animated characters for the study of bullying behavior

This paper considers the impact of gender on the design of animated agents that aim to evoke empathy and to encourage children to explore issues related to bullying. High fidelity storyboards containing bullying scenarios were presented to 80 ten year old children from two schools. Children individually completed a questionnaire that focused on amongst other things the empathic relationship between the child and the characters in the storyboard. Results indicate significant differences between the genders, with greater levels of empathy and comprehension achieved when characters are of the same gender as the child. This has considerable implications for the design of animated characters for bullying scenarios, requiring that the gender of the child is taken into account when designing animated characters and the scenarios they participate in.

FearNot’s appearance: reflecting children’s expectations and perspectives

This paper discusses FearNot, a virtual learning environment populated by synthetic characters aimed at the 8-12 year old age group for the exploration of bullying and coping strategies. Currently, FearNot is being redesigned from a lab-based prototype into a classroom tool. In this paper we focus on informing the design of the characters and of the virtual learning environment through our interpretation of qualitative data gathered about interaction with FearNot by 345 children. The paper focuses on qualitative data collected using the Classroom Discussion Forum technique and discusses its implications for the redesign of the media used for FearNot. The interpretation of the data identifies that the use of fairly naive synthetic characters for achieving empathic engagement appears to be an appropriate approach. Results do indicate a focus for redesign, with a clear need for improved transitions for animations; identification and repair of inconsistent graphical elements; and for a greater cast of characters and range of sets to achieve optimal engagement levels.

Affective Agents for Education Against Bullying

In this chapter, we give an overview of the FearNot! virtual drama system constructed for use in education against bullying. The motivation for the system is discussed and the chapter considers issues relating to believability. It describes the emotionally driven architecture used for characters as well as the management of the overall story and finally considers issues relating to evaluation of systems like this.

A development environment for intelligent applications on mobile devices

Abstract Mobile computing devices are becoming increasingly prevalent in a huge range of physical guises, offering a considerable market opportunity for software. Mature Artificial Intelligence technologies offer the potential to create compelling software for the mobile platform. However, few intelligent applications have been developed for mobile devices. This lack of development is related firstly to mobile device limitations, such as memory and processing power, and secondly to the requirement for portability due to the diversity in the mobile device market. This paper presents a development environment for intelligent applications for mobile devices that successfully addresses both of these issues. Case studies of intelligent applications developed with this development environment are briefly described. Some conclusions are presented and directions for future research considered.

Visual information search in simulated junction negotiation: gaze transitions of young novice, young experienced and older experienced drivers.

INTRODUCTION Older drivers and young novice drivers have problems negotiating road junctions. Explanations for problems largely focus on limitations in visual information processing and observation errors associated with age and experience. METHOD Gaze transitions provide information on the positional relationship of fixations, providing a useful tool for highlighting gaps in drivers visual information acquisition strategies. The gaze transitions of three driver groups (young novice, young experienced, and older experienced) were compared during gap selection in right turn junction negotiation manoeuvres. RESULTS When scanning the junction, young experienced drivers distributed their gaze more evenly across all areas, whereas older and novice drivers made more sweeping transitions, bypassing adjacent areas. The use of a preview strategy in the decision phase was less evident in the older experienced group compared to the younger groups. IMPACT The application of results to driver training interventions and future research are discussed.