Is Natural Necessary? Human Voice versus Synthetic Voice for Intelligent Virtual Agents

Abdulrahman, Amal; Richards, Deborah

doi:10.3390/mti6070051

Cited by 14 publications

(3 citation statements)

References 63 publications

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“…Qualitative feedback collected in this study indicated that three participants found ERICA's voice robotic and that this contributed to their low ratings of ERICA on the SRS scale. In a recent study investigating the impact of ECA voice types on likeability and user-agent relationships, users were reported to prefer a human voice over text-to-speech synthesis, but this preference did not appear to interfere with their user-agent relationship or interaction outcomes [61]. TTS voices continue to improve, but if outcomes are negatively impacted in future studies, we can record a human voice to speak ERICA'S dialogue, though this makes adaptive dialogue difficult.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

A Digital Coach to Promote Emotion Regulation Skills

Hopman

Richards

Norberg

2023

MTI

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There is growing awareness that effective emotion regulation is critical for health, adjustment and wellbeing. Emerging evidence suggests that interventions that promote flexible emotion regulation may have the potential to reduce the incidence and prevalence of mental health problems in specific at-risk populations. The challenge is how best to engage with at risk populations, who may not be actively seeking assistance, to deliver this early intervention approach. One possible solution is via digital technology and development, which has rapidly accelerated in this space. Such rapid growth has, however, occurred at the expense of developing a deep understanding of key elements of successful program design and specific mechanisms that influence health behavior change. This paper presents a detailed description of the design, development and evaluation of an emotion regulation intervention conversational agent (ERICA) who acts as a digital coach. ERICA uses interactive conversation to encourage self-reflection and to support and empower users to learn a range of cognitive emotion regulation strategies including Refocusing, Reappraisal, Planning and Putting into Perspective. A pilot evaluation of ERICA was conducted with 138 university students and confirmed that ERICA provided a feasible and highly usable method for delivering an emotion regulation intervention. The results also indicated that ERICA was able to develop a therapeutic relationship with participants and increase their intent to use a range of cognitive emotion regulation strategies. These findings suggest that ERICA holds potential to be an effective approach for delivering an early intervention to support mental health and wellbeing. ERICA’s dialogue, embedded with interactivity, therapeutic alliance and empathy cues, provide the basis for the development of other psychoeducation interventions.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

A Digital Coach to Promote Emotion Regulation Skills

Hopman

Richards

Norberg

2023

MTI

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“…This is important, as face-to-face communication has been identified as an important factor in encouraging treatment adherence, which is supported by the embodied nature of ECAs [35]. Furthermore, a sense of co-presence can be achieved with virtual agents [36,37].…”

Section: Ecas In Healthcare and Strokementioning

confidence: 97%

The Co-Design of an Embodied Conversational Agent to Help Stroke Survivors Manage Their Recovery

Richards,

Miranda Maciel,

Janssen

2023

Robotics

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Whilst the use of digital interventions to assist patients with self-management involving embodied conversational agents (ECA) is emerging, the use of such agents to support stroke rehabilitation and recovery is rare. This iTakeCharge project takes inspiration from the evidence-based narrative style self-management intervention for stroke recovery, the ‘Take Charge’ intervention, which has been shown to contribute to significant improvements in disability and quality of life after stroke. We worked with the developers and deliverers of the ‘Take Charge’ intervention tool, clinical stroke researchers and stroke survivors, to adapt the ‘Take Charge’ intervention tool to be delivered by an ECA (i.e., the Taking Charge Intelligent Agent (TaCIA)). TaCIA was co-designed using a three-phased approach: Stage 1: Phase I with the developers and Phase II with people who delivered the original Take Charge intervention to stroke survivors (i.e., facilitators); and Stage 2: Phase III with stroke survivors. This paper reports the results from each of these phases including an evaluation of the resulting ECA. Stage 1: Phase I, where TaCIA V.1 was evaluated by the Take Charge developers, did not build a good working alliance, provide adequate options, or deliver the intended Take Charge outcomes. In particular, the use of answer options and the coaching aspects of TaCIA V.1 were felt to conflict with the intention that Take Charge facilitators would not influence the responses of the patient. In response, in Stage 1: Phase II, TaCIA V.2 incorporated an experiment to determine the value of providing answer options versus free text responses. Take Charge facilitators agreed that allowing an open response concurrently with providing answer options was optimal and determined that working alliance and usability were satisfactory. Finally, in Stage 2: Phase III, TaCIA V.3 was evaluated with eight stroke survivors and was generally well accepted and considered useful. Increased user control, clarification of TaCIA’s role, and other improvements to improve accessibility were suggested. The article concludes with limitations and recommendations for future changes based on stroke survivor feedback.

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“…Görme yetersizliği olan geniş katılımcılı bir hedef kitlede etkileşim öğelerinin artırıldığı, öğrenci projelerinin işe koşulduğu iyi yapılandırılmış bir ters yüz öğrenme modelinin etkililiği incelenebilir. Akıllı ses ajanlarının seslendirme kalitesi arttıkça insan sesiyle benzer performanslar sergilediği görülmektedir (Abdulrahman ve Richards, 2022). Araştırmada kullanılan makine sesi zaman zaman harf ve seslendirme hataları yapabilmekte ve insan sesinden uzaklaşabilmektedir.…”

Section: öNerilerunclassified

Görme Yetersizliği Olan Öğrencilerin Mobil Uygulama Destekli Öğrenme Süreçlerinin İzlenmesi ve Geliştirilmesi: Bir Eylem Araştırması

Ayaz

2023

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Is Natural Necessary? Human Voice versus Synthetic Voice for Intelligent Virtual Agents

Cited by 14 publications

References 63 publications

A Digital Coach to Promote Emotion Regulation Skills

A Digital Coach to Promote Emotion Regulation Skills

The Co-Design of an Embodied Conversational Agent to Help Stroke Survivors Manage Their Recovery

Görme Yetersizliği Olan Öğrencilerin Mobil Uygulama Destekli Öğrenme Süreçlerinin İzlenmesi ve Geliştirilmesi: Bir Eylem Araştırması

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