Echoes - design of the agent
Building autonomous agents for children with autism
Aims for the agent -
p 46 ' to be able to act credibly both as a peer and as a tutor'
achieve
appropriately designed transactional support.
Autonomy p 47 ' an agent that is able to decide independently
how to act best in order to achieve a set if high level goals that have been
delegated to it'
Be pro-active - engender motivation & attention
Reactive - adaptive
Have social ability - so that it can maximise the chances of the
child experiencing a sense of self-efficacy
An ideal social agent with socio-emotional competence
ECHOES environment
12 learning activities that focus on two sub components that are
challenging for children on the autistic spectrum -
(i) joint attention ( the ability to coordinate and share
attention and emotions
(ii) symbol use -p48 ' understanding of meaning expressed
through conventional gestures and words and ability to use non verbal means to
share intentions'
Design for the agent
Derived from OCC and appraisal theory. OCC identifies 22
emotions. Agents provided with an affective system composed of emotional
reaction rules, action tendencies, emotional thresholds, emotion decay rates
P 499 ' The agent experiences one or more of the 22 emotions of
the OCC model based on its appraisal of the current external events and IRS
subjective tendencies to experience certain emotions instead of others. The
agents deal with these emotions by applying problem-focused or emotion-focused
coping strategies
The agent
Advantages of an agent - tireless, persistent, consistent &
positive
Positive, motivating, and supportive. Tends to be happy, does
not get frustrated easily.
Actions - verbal (using simple language or key words),
non-verbal (eye gaze and gesture)
Facial expression, a range of positive facial expressions (
involving lips, eyes, & eyebrows)
Evaluation
Response to bids for interaction ( post intervention cf Pre
intention)
From the agent -
slight increase but not SS
From the human practitioner- did increase and almost reached SS
Initiation of bids
To the agent - numerical increase but not SS
To the human participant - very low and remained low
