Shivashankar Halan

High score!: motivation strategies for user participation in virtual human development

Conversational modeling requires an extended time commitment, and the difficulty associated with capturing the wide range of conversational stimuli necessitates extended user participation. We propose the use of leaderboards, narratives and deadlines as motivation strategies to persuade user participation in the conversational modeling for virtual humans. We evaluate the applicability of leaderboards, narratives and deadlines through a user study conducted with medical students (n=20) for modeling the conversational corpus of a virtual patient character. Leaderboards, narratives and deadlines were observed to be effective in improving user participation. Incorporating these strategies had the additional effect of making user responses less reflective of real world conversations.

Virtual Humans Versus Standardized Patients: Which Lead Residents to More Correct Diagnoses?

Purpose Medical educators frequently use standardized patient (SP) encounters to bridge the gap between didactic education and practical application. Typically, SPs are healthy adults with no consistent physical findings; however, highly immersive virtual humans (VHs) may enable the consistent presentation of abnormal physical findings to multiple learners across multiple repetitions. Thus, the authors conducted this study to compare how frequently junior anesthesiology residents suspected obstructive sleep apnea (OSA) in preoperative assessments of SPs versus a VH. Method The authors presented a patient whose case included the historical features of OSA (snoring, daytime fatigue, observed apnea, hypertension, and obesity). Three SPs (in 2008) and one VH (in 2009) were necessary to run the residents through the assessment. The VH appeared morbidly obese and had a neck circumference of 40 inches. An airway exam of the VH displayed an image of redundant soft tissue, prominent tongue, and tonsillar hypertrophy. The VH responded to natural speech by recognizing “triggers” in a humans voice. The 849 triggers and 259 VH responses were designed with a technique that collects information from user interactions. Results Five of 21 residents (23.8%) suspected OSA after interviewing the SPs, whereas 11 of 13 residents (84.6%) suspected OSA after interviewing the VH (odds ratio of 17.6; 95% CI of 2.9–107). Conclusions Residents suspected OSA much more frequently after interviewing the VH than after interviewing the SPs. The VH provides a unique opportunity to display numerous abnormal physical findings as part of SP encounters.

Adapting Virtual Patient Interviews for Interviewing Skills Training of Novice Healthcare Students

The purpose of this paper is to explore the potential of using a selection-based interaction method to adapt virtual patient interviews for training novice healthcare students in interviewing skills. We outline a method for identifying topics about which novices are likely to ask by reviewing previous transcripts of novice interactions, and results indicate that the method was successful in such identification. Additionally, we examine the possibility of using a selection-based virtual patient as a modeling tool for learning interviewing skills. Our initial results support the possibility of such question modeling and reveal that healthcare students already view selection-based virtual patient interactions as modeling opportunities.

Virtual Agent Constructionism: Experiences from Health Professions Students Creating Virtual Conversational Agent Representations of Patients

This paper reports on applying constructionism with virtual agents in an educational setting. We introduce a methodology - Virtual Agent Constructionism, which involves health professions students creating virtual conversational agent representations of patients as part of coursework. The proposed methodology was implemented as an exercise in an educational course for three consecutive academic years. The aim of this paper is threefold - (i) to demonstrate feasibility of health professions students creating virtual agents in an educational setting as part of coursework, (ii) to report feedback from the students about the experience of creating virtual agents, and (iii) to report on initial trends that suggest that creating virtual agents helps health professions students improve their interviewing and interpersonal skills. In addition to these three innovations, we also present the virtual agents created as educational artifacts that can be used to train future students with their interpersonal skills.

Exploring the Effects of Healthcare Students Creating Virtual Patients for Empathy Training

Intelligent virtual agents have been successfully used for interpersonal skills training of healthcare students by enabling simulated interactions between healthcare students and virtual patient agents. However, during these interactions, students do not get the opportunity to take the perspective of the patient. Taking the perspective of the patient is essential for healthcare students to learn critical interpersonal skills like empathy. We propose having healthcare students create virtual patient agents of a particular race to provide them the opportunity to take the perspective of patients from that race, leading to increased empathy during subsequent interactions with patients of that race. We conducted a semester-long user study with 24 healthcare students to explore the effects of having them create virtual patient agents. Results indicate that healthcare students who created and interviewed virtual patients of the same race were significantly more empathetic than students who created virtual patients with a race discordant to the one they interacted with.

Virtual Environments and Virtual Humans for Military Mild Traumatic Brain Injury and Posttraumatic Stress Disorder: An Emerging Concept

From the U.S. Department of Veteran’s Affairs, North Florida/South Georgia Veterans Health System, Gainesville, Florida (CEL,EPS, LL); Department of Occupational Therapy (CEL) andDepartment of Computer and Information Science andEngineering, College of Engineering (SH, BCL), University ofFlorida, Gainesville; Department of Physiological Sciences,College of Veterinary Medicine (EPS), and Departments of Clinicaland Health Psychology (MM) and Occupational Therapy (LL),College of Public Health and Health Professions, University ofFlorida, Gainesville; and U.S. Department of Veteran’s Affairs,Charlotte, North Carolina (DO).Supported by (1) W81XWH-08-2-0194 PT073664 Design ofEffective Therapeutic Interventions for Mild TBI/PTSD usingInteractive Virtual World Environments, CDMRP/DoD9.15.08-9.14.09; (2) Development of Virtual Humans For PTSDand mTBI: Rehabilitation Outcomes Research Center 2010Y2011;and (3) 1I01RX000339-01A3, Virtual Environments forTherapuetic Solutions (VETS) mTBI/PTSD Phase II, VA RR&D,

Constructionism of virtual humans to improve perceptions of conversational partners

824,835, 4.1.13-3.30.16.Financial disclosure statements have been obtained, and noconflicts of interest have been reported by the authors or by anyindividuals in control of the content of this article.0894-9115/15/9404-e31American Journal of Physical Medicine & RehabilitationCopyright * 2015 Wolters Kluwer Health, Inc. All rights reserved.

Description of Web-Enhanced Virtual Character Simulation System to Standardize Patient Hand-Offs

We propose a methodology to help people improve the accuracy of their mental model of a conversational partner by creating a virtual human representation of the partner. By creating a virtual human, the users will be able to transfer their mental model of the partner to a virtual human representation. Other people can then interact with the virtual human and provide feedback. The feedback will help the creator reduce the gap between their mental model of a partner and the actual qualities of the partner. Reducing this gap in perception is important in learning interpersonal skills. We implemented this methodology in a health professions course using Virtual People Factory, an online application for creating and interacting with virtual humans. The applicability of the methodology to reduce gaps in perception models was investigated through a user study with health professions students (n=32). The results indicate that students can reduce gaps in perceptions of conversational partners by creating virtual humans.