TY - GEN
T1 - Investigating the effects of virtual patients’ nonsensical responses on users’ facial expressions in mental health training scenarios
AU - de Siqueira, Alexandre Gomes
AU - Yao, Heng
AU - Bafna, Anokhi
AU - Bloch-Elkouby, Sarah
AU - Richards, Jenelle A.
AU - Lloveras, Lauren B.
AU - Feeney, Kathleen
AU - Morris, Stephanie
AU - Musser, Erica D.
AU - Lok, Benjamin
AU - Galynker, Igor
N1 - Funding Information:
This work was supported by the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention (LSRG-1-050-18) and the National Institutes of Health (NIMH 1R34MH119294-01).
Publisher Copyright:
© 2021 Association for Computing Machinery.
PY - 2021/12/8
Y1 - 2021/12/8
N2 - This report investigates how clinician-participants react to virtual patients’ sensical vs. nonsensical responses in a training simulation that aims to help clinicians acquire empathetic skills toward high-risk patients with symptoms of the Suicide Crisis Syndrome (SCS). Two suicidal virtual patients were developed, and clinician-participants interactions with them were recorded. Their facial emotions were analysed in three key moments: after a baseline sensical response, after a nonsensical response, and after the following sensical response. We compared their basic facial emotions aggregated into Negative and Positive facial affective behaviors (FABs). We describe our study involving ten clinician-participants and the results of the facial expression analysis with Noldus FaceReader. Our results suggest that nonsensical responses from virtual humans have an overall impact in both Positive and Negative facial affective emotions, and may lead to an increased percent of time participants demonstrate Negative facial affective behaviors when interacting with virtual humans. We discuss several aspects regarding the impacts and importance of considering nonsensical responses in the context of virtual human-based interactions.
AB - This report investigates how clinician-participants react to virtual patients’ sensical vs. nonsensical responses in a training simulation that aims to help clinicians acquire empathetic skills toward high-risk patients with symptoms of the Suicide Crisis Syndrome (SCS). Two suicidal virtual patients were developed, and clinician-participants interactions with them were recorded. Their facial emotions were analysed in three key moments: after a baseline sensical response, after a nonsensical response, and after the following sensical response. We compared their basic facial emotions aggregated into Negative and Positive facial affective behaviors (FABs). We describe our study involving ten clinician-participants and the results of the facial expression analysis with Noldus FaceReader. Our results suggest that nonsensical responses from virtual humans have an overall impact in both Positive and Negative facial affective emotions, and may lead to an increased percent of time participants demonstrate Negative facial affective behaviors when interacting with virtual humans. We discuss several aspects regarding the impacts and importance of considering nonsensical responses in the context of virtual human-based interactions.
KW - Empathy skills
KW - Nonsensical responses
KW - Sensical responses
KW - Suicide crises syndrome
KW - Virtual human
KW - Virtual patient
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85121436550&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1145/3489849.3489864
DO - 10.1145/3489849.3489864
M3 - Conference contribution
AN - SCOPUS:85121436550
T3 - Proceedings of the ACM Symposium on Virtual Reality Software and Technology, VRST
BT - Proceedings - VRST 2021
A2 - Spencer, Stephen N.
PB - Association for Computing Machinery
T2 - 27th ACM Symposium on Virtual Reality Software and Technology, VRST 2021
Y2 - 8 December 2021 through 10 December 2021
ER -