Using Animated Pedagogical Agents Teaching Empathetic Listening Skills: The Nonverbal Advantage

Old Dominion University

Why agents?

  • Arguments against use of APA (Clark 1983, Clark and Choi 2005)
    • novelty effect
    • expense
    • seductive detail
    • evidence of learning gains
  • BUT Can be a necessary affordance for specific instructional approaches
    • in this case, a simulated role play strategy

Empathetic communication skills

  • core skill in counseling and helping professions
    • feeling with the client rather than for the client
    • certain words associated with empathy, students need to internalize these
    • allows helper to maintain objectivity
  • methods for teaching it
    • films
    • role-play exercises
      • how do you do this in distance ed? film it and send it back and forth?
    • paid actors
  • We need cost/resource effective means to teach students at a distance

CATHIE: Computer agents teaching helping interactions effectively

  • online interview simulation designed to train empathetic communication skills
    • web based, student-directed
  • features
    • animated agent acting as client
    • three response choices at varying levels of effectiveness
    • immediate feedback on response choice
    • non verbal decoding - listening to client and looking at facial expressions
  • Situated cognition (Brown, Collins and Duguid 1989)
  • Principles of simulation design
    • operationalize simulated professional practice
      • what is it like when someone comes into the room?
    • meaningful stimulus
    • appropriate fidelity consideration
      • difference with novice and expert counselors

The nonverbal advantage

  • Decoding verbal and nonverbal responses
  • Not possible without a responsive, programmable character on the screen
    • allows for dynamic responses and system flexibilities
  • Recorded voice from experienced counselor, showing what people sound like when they break down, etc
  • Why not use video
    • want dynamic session that can teach you something - your responses affect the next response
  • Working on authoring tool

User responses

  • Really liked working with the client, getting immediate feedback.
  • Eye tracking
    • shows that experts really focus strongly on face, but even novices watch the face intently