[Colloq] CS Thesis proposal - An Affectively-Aware Dialogue System for Counseling

[Timothy Bickmore]

Title: An Affectively-Aware Dialogue System for Counseling
Speaker: Lazlo Ring
Date: Tuesday, December 1st
Time: 9:00am

Location: WVH 366

Abstract:

The expression and understanding of emotions are key components of human-human communication. However, when individuals interact with computers, this rich channel of information is typically lost. This is especially problematic in certain domains such as health counseling, where emotions play a key role in patient communication. To address this issue, previous research has explored how to infer a user's emotional state from their verbal and non-verbal behaviors. This work has been incorporated into a number of embodied conversational agent systems: animated computer characters that simulate face-to-face conversation with users. While the conversational agent community has primarily used this research to develop models to simulate how an agent should emotionally respond to it's environment, few have looked at ways in which an agent should convey its emotional understanding back to a user, especially in the health care domain.

In this work, I plan to explore how users react to a counseling agent based on their emotional state, and how these reactions can be used to drive the agent's behavior in real time to improve the agent's efficacy at achieving a desired therapeutic outcome. Drawing upon theories of emotion from psychology, this thesis will focus on the creation and evaluation of an Affectively-Aware dialogue system for counseling by investigating how an agent should respond reactively and prospectively to a user's emotional state. To evaluate the efficacy of this system, I will conduct a longitudinal study to investigate its ability to act as a virtual therapist in a five-week cognitive behavioral change intervention for depression.


Committee:

Prof. Timothy Bickmore (advisor)
Prof. Stephen S. Intille
Prof. Stacy Marsella
Dr. Paola Pedrelli (external examiner,
     Harvard Medical School, Massachusetts General Hospital)

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Timothy W. Bickmore, Ph.D.                         bickmore at ccs.neu.edu
Associate Professor               http://www.ccs.neu.edu/home/bickmore/
College of Computer and Information Science      Office: (617) 373-5477
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