EAGER: An Animated Agent for Developing the Conversational Skills of Individuals with Social Interaction Difficulties

这项探索性研究的早期拨款旨在开发一种基于计算机的动画代理的探索性版本，该代理可以模拟对话伙伴，允许有社交互动困难的用户，例如患有阿斯伯格综合症的用户，练习对话技巧。互动将探索通过对话与用户建立友好的关系；建立这种融洽的关系是一项重要的社交技能，但对目标个人来说却很难获得。据推测，这些个体将从探索性代理中受益匪浅，因为探索性代理允许他们练习会话技巧，而不会有失败或留下糟糕印象的风险。这项探索性技术最令人兴奋的地方在于，它通过标准化、客观和可重复的刺激，让用户坐在互动的驾驶座上。“熟悉”场景的体系结构框架非常通用，足以适用于许多其他具有社会重要性的限制性会话场景，例如工作面试、客户服务和参与小组决策。探索性代理是一个模拟的成年人，以经验丰富的咨询师（来自罗切斯特大学医学中心的专家顾问为该项目提供咨询）的成熟、耐心的方式做出回应。代理将用户话语的主题和内容与伴随话语的韵律、面部表情、凝视方向和头部动作联系起来。代理还通过红/绿屏幕图标提供有关这些行为的有用的实时反馈，并在会话结束时提供行为总结和改进行为的建议。这个探索性项目的初始领域是“熟悉”，也就是说，参与到以前没有见过面的人的常规闲聊中。对话框架具有一些独立于主题的事务性知识，以启动对话并在对话期间做出适当的响应。当用户对智能体的问题和提示的回答偏离预期时，智能体就会衍生出一系列策略，包括回避回答、请求重复、提供鼓励和提示进一步输入。该项目包括探索更一般的问题，如在动画代理中集成非语言和语言行为所需的架构。该项目还带来了新的用户界面，可以捕捉反映对话动态的非语言行为分析。

This EArly Grant for Exploratory Research seeks to develop an exploratory version of a computer-based animated agent that simulates a conversational partner, allowing users with social interaction difficulties, such as ones with Asperger syndrome, to practice conversational skills. The interaction will explore establishing friendly rapport with the user through conversation; building such rapport is an important social skill that is difficult for the targeted individuals to acquire. It is hypothesized that such individuals will very significantly benefit from the exploratory agent, by allowing them to practice conversational skills without risk of failure or of making a poor impression. The most exciting part of this exploratory technology is that it puts users in the driver's seat of the interaction with a standardized, objective and repeatable stimulus. The architectural framework for the "getting acquainted" scenario is general enough to be adaptable to many other restricted conversational scenarios of societal importance such as job interviews, customer service, and participating in group decision-making. The exploratory agent is a simulated adult responding in the mature, patient manner of an experienced consultant (an expert advisor from the University of Rochester Medical Center consults on the project). The agent correlates the topic and content of the user's utterances with the prosody, facial expressions, gaze direction and head motions accompanying the utterances. The agent also provides helpful real-time feedback via red/green screen icons about these behaviors, and behavioral summaries and suggestions for improving the behavior at the end of a session. The initial domain in this exploratory project is "getting acquainted", i.e., engaging in the sort of small talk that is conventional for individuals who have not previously met. The dialogue framework has some transactional knowledge, independent of topic, to initiate a conversation and to respond appropriately during a conversation. When the user's responses to the agent's questions and prompts deviate from expectations, the agent branches to clusters of strategies including evasive answers, requesting repetition, providing encouragement and prompting further input. The project includes exploration of more general questions such as the architecture required for integrating nonlinguistic and linguistic behavior in an animated agent. The project also leads to new user interfaces that can capture nonverbal behavior analytics reflecting the dynamics of the conversation.