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International Conference on Practical Applications of Agents and Multi-Agent Systems

PAAMS 2018: Highlights of Practical Applications of Agents, Multi-Agent Systems, and Complexity: The PAAMS Collection pp 24–35Cite as

Mood Mirroring with an Embodied Virtual Agent: A Pilot Study on the Relationship Between Personalized Visual Feedback and Adherence

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Part of the book series: Communications in Computer and Information Science ((CCIS,volume 887))

Abstract

Human support is thought to increase adherence to internet-based interventions for common mental health disorders, but can be costly and reduce treatment accessibility. Embodied virtual agents may be used to deliver automated support, but while many solutions have been shown to be feasible, there is still little controlled research that empirically validates their clinical effectiveness in this context. This study uses a controlled and randomized paradigm to investigate whether feedback from an embodied virtual agent can increase adherence. In a three-week ecological momentary assessment smartphone study, 68 participants were asked to report their mood three times a day. An embodied virtual agent could mirror participant-reported mood states when thanking them for their answers. A two-stage randomization into a text and personalized visual feedback group, versus a text-only control group, was applied to control for individual differences (study onset) and feedback history (after two weeks). Results indicate that while personalized visual feedback did not increase adherence, it did manage to keep adherence constant over a three-week period, whereas fluctuations in adherence could be observed in the text-only control group. Although this was a pilot study, and its results should be interpreted with some caution, this paper shows how virtual agent feedback may have a stabilizing effect on adherence, how controlled experiments on the relationship between virtual agent support and clinically relevant measures such as adherence can be conducted, and how results may be analyzed.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Section of Clinical Psychology, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, Amsterdam, Netherlands

    Simon Provoost, Jeroen Ruwaard, Koen Neijenhuijs & Heleen Riper

  2. Amsterdam Public Health, Amsterdam, Netherlands

    Simon Provoost, Jeroen Ruwaard, Koen Neijenhuijs & Heleen Riper

  3. GGZ inGeest, Amsterdam, Netherlands

    Jeroen Ruwaard & Heleen Riper

  4. Department of Computer Science, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, Amsterdam, Netherlands

    Tibor Bosse

  5. University of Southern Denmark, Odense, Denmark

    Heleen Riper

Authors
  1. Simon Provoost
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  2. Jeroen Ruwaard
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  3. Koen Neijenhuijs
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  4. Tibor Bosse
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  5. Heleen Riper
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Simon Provoost .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Universidad Politécnica de Madrid, Madrid, Spain

    Javier Bajo

  2. Departamento de Informática y Automática, Universidad de Salamanca, Salamanca, Spain

    Juan M. Corchado

  3. Departamento de Sistemas Informáticos, University of Castilla-La Mancha, Albacete, Spain

    Elena María Navarro Martínez

  4. TECNALIA, Derio, Spain

    Eneko Osaba Icedo

  5. Lille University of Science and Technology, Villeneuve d’Ascq, France

    Philippe Mathieu

  6. Poznan University of Technology, Poznan, Poland

    Patrycja Hoffa-Dąbrowska

  7. Polytechnic University of Valencia, Valencia, Spain

    Elena del Val

  8. Faculté des Sciences, Université de Sherbrooke, Sherbrooke, Québec, Canada

    Sylvain Giroux

  9. University of Porto, Porto, Portugal

    Antonio J.M. Castro

  10. Rio de Janeiro State University, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

    Nayat Sánchez-Pi

  11. Polytechnic University of Valencia, Valencia, Spain

    Vicente Julián

  12. Informatica e Estatistica, Universidade Federal de Santa Catar, Florianopolis, Santa Catarina, Brazil

    Ricardo Azambuja Silveira

  13. Universidad Rey Juan Carlos, Móstoles, Madrid, Spain

    Alberto Fernández

  14. ICB, Universität Duisburg-Essen, Essen, Germany

    Rainer Unland

  15. Facultad de Informática, Universidad Complutense de Madrid, Madrid, Spain

    Rubén Fuentes-Fernández

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Provoost, S., Ruwaard, J., Neijenhuijs, K., Bosse, T., Riper, H. (2018). Mood Mirroring with an Embodied Virtual Agent: A Pilot Study on the Relationship Between Personalized Visual Feedback and Adherence. In: Bajo, J., et al. Highlights of Practical Applications of Agents, Multi-Agent Systems, and Complexity: The PAAMS Collection. PAAMS 2018. Communications in Computer and Information Science, vol 887. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-94779-2_3

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-94779-2_3

  • Published:

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-319-94778-5

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-319-94779-2

  • eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)

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