Page 164 - Socially Intelligent Agents Creating Relationships with Computers and Robots

Pedagogical Soap 147

trol their children” and “treat them with respect.” So discussing her daughter’s
tantrums can lead to sadness out of concern for Diana and anxiety/guilt be-
cause failure to control Diana may reflect on her ability as a mother. More
generally, because of her depression, the Carmen agent may initially require
prompting. But as she is reassured, or the various subproblems in the strategy
are addressed, she will begin to feel hopeful that the problem solving will work
and may engage the problem solving without explicit prompting.
The learner is also part of this interaction. She impacts Carmen by choosing
among possible thoughts and feelings that Carmen might have in the current
situation, which are then incorporated into Carmen’s mental model, causing
Carmen to act accordingly. This design allows the learner to adopt different
relationships to Carmen and the story. The learner may have Carmen feel as
she would, act they way she would or “act out” in ways she would not in front
of her real-world counselor.
The combination of Gina’s motivation through dialog and the learner’s im-
pact on Carmen has an interesting impact on the drama. While Gina is using
dialog to motivate Carmen, the learner’s interaction is also influencing Car-
men’s thoughts and emotions. This creates a tension in the drama, a tug-of-
war between Gina’s attempts to motivate Carmen and the initial, possibly less
positive, attitudes of the Carmen/learner pair. As the learner plays a role in
determining Carmen’s attitudes, she assumes a relationship in this tug-of-war,
including, ideally, an empathy for Carmen and her difficulties, a responsibility
for the onscreen action and perhaps empathy for Gina. If Gina gets Carmen to
actively engage in applying the IDEAS technique with a positive attitude, then
she potentially wins over the learner, giving her a positive attitude. Regardless,
the learner gets a vivid demonstration of how to apply the technique.

4. Concluding Comments

The social interactions in Carmen’s Bright IDEAS are played out in front of
a demanding audience - mothers undergoing problems similar to Carmen. This
challenges the agents to socially interact with a depth and subtlety consistent
with human behavior in difficult, stressful situations. Currently, the Carmen’s
Bright IDEAS prototype is in clinical trials, where it is facing its demanding
audience. The anecdotal feedback is extremely positively. Soon, a careful
evaluation of how well the challenge has been addressed will be forthcoming.

Acknowledgments
The work discussed here was done with W. Lewis Johnson and Catherine LaBore. The
author also wishes to thank our clinical psychologist collaborators, particularly O.J. Sahler,
MD, Ernest Katz, Ph.D., James Varni, Ph.D., and Karin Hart, Psy.D. Discussions with Jeff