Virtual Advisor Research Articles

Flexible use of confidence to guide advice requests

Subjective confidence plays an important role in guiding behavior, for example, people typically commit to decisions immediately if high in confidence and seek additional information if not. The present study examines whether people are flexible in their use of confidence, such that the mapping between confidence and behavior is not fixed but can instead vary depending on the specific context. To investigate this proposal, we tested the hypothesis that the seemingly natural relationship between low confidence and requesting advice varies according to whether people know, or do not know, the quality of the advice. Participants made an initial perceptual judgement and then chose between re-sampling evidence or receiving advice from a virtual advisor, before committing to a final decision. The results indicated that, when objective information about advisor reliability was not available, participants selected advice more often when their confidence was high rather than when it was low. This pattern reflects the use of confidence as a feedback proxy to learn about advisor quality: Participants were able to learn about the reliability of advice even in the absence of feedback and subsequently requested more advice from better advisors. In contrast, when participants had prior knowledge about the reliability of advisors, they requested advice more often when their confidence was low, reflecting the use of confidence as a self-monitoring tool signaling that help should be solicited. These findings indicate that people use confidence in a way that is context-dependent and directed towards achieving their current goals.

Robo-advisor acceptance: Do gender and generation matter?

Robo-advice technology refers to services offered by a virtual financial advisor based on artificial intelligence. Research on the application of robo-advice technology already highlights the potential benefit in terms of financial inclusion. We analyze the process for adopting robo-advice through the technology acceptance model (TAM), focusing on a highly educated sample and exploring generational and gender differences. We find no significant gender difference in the causality links with adoption, although some structural differences still arise between male and female groups. Further, we find evidence that generational cohorts affect the path to future adoption of robo-advice technology. Indeed, the ease of use is the factor which triggers the adoption by Generation Z and Generation Y, whereas the perceived usefulness of robo-advice technology is the key factor driving Generation X+, who need to understand the ultimate purpose of a robo-advice technology tool before adopting it. Overall, the above findings may reflect that, while gender differences are wiped out in a highly educated population, generation effects still matter in the adoption of a robo-advice technology tool.

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

The use of intelligent virtual agents (IVA) to support humans in social contexts will depend on their social acceptability. Acceptance will be related to the human’s perception of the IVAs as well as the IVAs’ ability to respond and adapt their conversation appropriately to the human. Adaptation implies computer-generated speech (synthetic speech), such as text-to-speech (TTS). In this paper, we present the results of a study to investigate the effect of voice type (human voice vs. synthetic voice) on two aspects: (1) the IVA’s likeability and voice impression in the light of co-presence, and (2) the interaction outcome, including human–agent trust and behavior change intention. The experiment included 118 participants who interacted with either the virtual advisor with TTS or the virtual advisor with human voice to gain tips for reducing their study stress. Participants in this study found the voice of the virtual advisor with TTS to be more eerie, but they rated both agents, with recorded voice and with TTS, similarly in terms of likeability. They further showed a similar attitude towards both agents in terms of co-presence and building trust. These results challenge previous studies that favor human voice over TTS, and suggest that even if human voice is preferred, TTS can deliver equivalent benefits.

Exploring the influence of a user-specific explainable virtual advisor on health behaviour change intentions

Virtual advisors (VAs) are being utilised almost in every service nowadays from entertainment to healthcare. To increase the user’s trust in these VAs and encourage the users to follow their advice, they should have the capability of explaining their decisions, particularly, when the decision is vital such as health advice. However, the role of an explainable VA in health behaviour change is understudied. There is evidence that people tend to change their intentions towards health behaviour when the persuasion message is linked to their mental state. Thus, this study explores this link by introducing an explainable VA that provides explanation according to the user’s mental state (beliefs and goals) rather than the agent’s mental state as commonly utilised in explainable agents. It further explores the influence of different explanation patterns that refer to beliefs, goals, or beliefs&goals on the user’s behaviour change. An explainable VA was designed to advise undergraduate students how to manage their study-related stress by motivating them to change certain behaviours. With 91 participants, the VA was evaluated and the results revealed that user-specific explanation could significantly encourage behaviour change intentions and build good user-agent relationship. Small differences were found between the three types of explanation patterns.

Effectiveness of embodied conversational agents for managing academic stress at an Indian University (ARU) during COVID‐19

AbstractStress has become one of the major reasons for many mental health related issues among students of all age groups, which has resulted in devastating personal losses including suicide. Societal and familial pressure to succeed is high, particularly in developing countries where education is highly valued as a key enabler. As part of stress management during the COVID‐19 pandemic, demand for online intelligent virtual advisors has risen and, consequently, the need for personalised explanation that is culturally sensitive to the user's context is essential to improve the user's understanding of and trust in the recommendations provided by the virtual advisor. This paper presents the mAnaging stRess at University embodied conversational agent (ECA) that has been adapted for Indian university students from an explainable agent that was found to help Western students reduce their stress by providing study tips with explanations based on the student's beliefs and/or goals. We conducted a research study with sixty students which measured the impact of providing three different patterns of tailored explanations (belief‐based, goal‐based, and belief and goal‐based explanation) on the students' intentions to change the recommended behaviours and the relationship built with the ECA. The experimental results indicate that there was stress reduction across all student groups provided with different types of explanations. Further, the students showed trust and a good working alliance with the conversational agent, along with an intention to change behaviour across all types of explanations. However, it was observed that the user context played an important role in behaviour change intention and hence explanations could be tailored further, making them culturally more relevant to Indian students. Practitioner notesWhat is already known about this topic Embodied conversational agents (ECAs) have been mostly developed, applied and shown to be effective in developed countries. Hence, their design and development are mostly guided by the intended user's needs and preferences. In a Western context, ECAs have been found to be beneficial for reducing study stress in university students. There is a pertinent need for use of low cost, effective technology that can aid academic stress reduction in higher educational institutions in developing countries owing to their high youth populations, lack of adequate mental healthcare facilities and associated social stigma. What this paper adds The adaptation and use of ECAs to reduce study stress in higher education students in a developing country is evaluated. The ECA technology is adapted for an Indian context in terms of its physical appearance, colour, speech dialect and dialog content so that it is culturally more aligned to the target population. The ECA engages in an empathic conversation tailored for the Indian students and their COVID‐19 context providing them with explanation‐backed behaviour recommendations that take their beliefs and goals into account. The ECA provides three types of explanation: belief‐only; goal‐only; and both belief and goal. Results of a study carried out in an Indian university with 61 students, randomly assigned to one of the explanation types, to capture their demographics, study stress statistics, behaviour change intentions and trust/working alliance with the conversational agent. The major findings include stress reduction across all explanation groups, development of a positive relationship between the ECA and the students regardless of its explanation pattern, and changes in behaviour intentions across all types of explanations for all recommended behaviours. However, differences in change intentions for certain behaviours indicate further tailoring of explanations is required based on the user context. Implications for practice and/or policy The ECA technology has shown promise in terms of stress reduction amongst Indian students. Higher Education Institutions in developing countries could utilise low‐cost and widely accessible ECAs to overcome lack of access to human‐based support and reluctance to use available services due to stigmatized attitudes to mental health issues. This technology can be further improved and deployed into a larger number of Indian educational institutions leading to a widespread impact on overall student health and wellbeing. Digital technologies to support mental health have become more prominent during the COVID‐19 pandemic, at least in Western countries. The ECA technology evaluated in our study demonstrates its viability and potential value for use in developing countries, with appropriate tailoring.

Verbal empathy and explanation to encourage behaviour change intention

Inspired by the role of therapist-patient relationship in fostering behaviour change, agent-human relationship has been an active research area. This trusted relationship could be a result of the agent’s behavioural cues or the content it delivers that shows its knowledge. However, the impact of the resulting relationship using the various strategies on behaviour change is understudied. In this paper, we investigate the role of two strategies (empathic and social dialogue and explanation) in building agent-user rapport and whether the level of behaviour change intentions are due to the use of empathy or to trusting the agent’s understanding and recommendations through explanation. Hence, we designed two versions of a virtual advisor, empathic and neutral, to reduce study stress among university students and measured students’ rapport levels and intentions to change their behaviour. Some recommended behaviours had explanations based on the user’s beliefs. Our results showed that the agent could build a trusting relationship with the user with the help of the explanation regardless of the level of rapport. The results further showed that nearly all of the recommendations provided by the agent highly significantly increased the intention of the user to change their behavior related to these recommendations. However, we also found that it is important for the agent to obtain and reason about the user’s intentions concerning the specific behaviour before recommending a certain behavior change.

Effects of Counseling by Peer Human Advisors vs Computers to Increase Walking in Underserved Populations

Effective and practical treatments are needed to increase physical activity among those at heightened risk from inactivity. Walking represents a popular physical activity that can produce a range of desirable health effects, particularly as people age. To test the hypothesis that counseling by a computer-based virtual advisor is no worse than (ie, noninferior to) counseling by trained human advisors for increasing 12-month walking levels among inactive adults. A cluster-randomized, noninferiority parallel trial enrolled 245 adults between July 21, 2014, and July 29, 2016, with follow-up through September 15, 2017. Data analysis was performed from March 15 to December 20, 2018. The evidence-derived noninferiority margin was 30 minutes of walking per week. Participants included inactive adults aged 50 years and older, primarily of Latin American descent and capable of walking without significant limitations, from 10 community centers in Santa Clara and San Mateo counties, California. All participants received similar evidence-based, 12-month physical activity counseling at their local community center, with the 10 centers randomized to a computerized virtual advisor program (virtual) or a previously validated peer advisor program (human). The primary outcome was change in walking minutes per week over 12 months using validated interview assessment corroborated with accelerometry. Both per-protocol and intention-to-treat analysis was performed. Among the 245 participants randomized, 193 were women (78.8%) and 241 participants (98.4%) were Latino. Mean (SD) age was 62.3 (8.4) years (range, 50-87 years), 107 individuals (43.7%) had high school or less educational level, mean BMI was 32.8 (6.8), and mean years residence in the US was 47.4 (17.0) years. A total of 231 participants (94.3%) completed the study. Mean 12-month change in walking was 153.9 min/wk (95% CI, 126.3 min/wk to infinity) for the virtual cohort (n = 123) and 131.9 min/wk (95% CI, 101.4 min/wk to infinity) for the human cohort (n = 122) (difference, 22.0, with lower limit of 1-sided 95% CI, -20.6 to infinity; P = .02); this finding supports noninferiority. Improvements emerged in both arms for relevant clinical risk factors, sedentary behavior, and well-being measures. The findings of this study indicate that a virtual advisor using evidence-based strategies produces significant 12-month walking increases for older, lower-income Latino adults that are no worse than the significant improvements achieved by human advisors. Changes produced by both programs are commensurate with those reported in previous investigations of these behavioral interventions and provide support for broadening the range of light-touch physical activity programs that can be offered to a diverse population. ClinicalTrials.gov Identifier: NCT02111213.

Adapting a Virtual Advisor’s Verbal Conversation Based on Predicted User Preferences: A Study of Neutral, Empathic and Tailored Dialogue

Virtual agents that improve the lives of humans need to be more than user-aware and adaptive to the user’s current state and behavior. Additionally, they need to apply expertise gained from experience that drives their adaptive behavior based on deep understanding of the user’s features (such as gender, culture, personality, and psychological state). Our work has involved extension of FAtiMA (Fearnot AffecTive Mind Architecture) with the addition of an Adaptive Engine to the FAtiMA cognitive agent architecture. We use machine learning to acquire the agent’s expertise by capturing a collection of user profiles into a user model and development of agent expertise based on the user model. In this paper, we describe a study to evaluate the Adaptive Engine, which compares the benefit (i.e., reduced stress, increased rapport) of tailoring dialogue to the specific user (Adaptive group) with dialogues that are either empathic (Empathic group) or neutral (Neutral group). Results showed a significant reduction in stress in the empathic and neutral groups, but not the adaptive group. Analyses of rule accuracy, participants’ dialogue preferences, and individual differences reveal that the three groups had different needs for empathic dialogue and highlight the importance and challenges of getting the tailoring right.

An intelligent garment recommendation system based on fuzzy techniques

Garment purchasing through the Internet has become an important trend for consumers. However, in various garment e-shopping systems, it systematically lacks personalized recommendations, like sales advisors in classical shops, in order to propose the most relevant products to different consumers according to their body shapes and fashion requirements. In this paper, we propose a consumer-oriented recommendation system by fuzzy techniques and AHP, which can be used inside a garment online shopping system like a virtual sales advisor. This system has been developed by integrating the professional knowledge of designers and shoppers and taking into account consumers’ perception on products. It can effectively help consumers to choose garments from the Internet. Compared with other prediction methods, the proposed method is more robust and interpretable owing to its capacity of treating uncertainty.

Selecting a Medical School Advisor.

Having an advisor offers medical students many advantages, including increased likelihood of matching into their top choices. Interestingly, students who choose emergency medicine (EM) as a specialty are more likely to seek advising. However, finding and optimally utilizing an EM faculty advisor is often challenging for the medical student. In this article, we tackle the different ways to seek advising, including the 'virtual advisor program' implemented by the Society for Academic Emergency Medicine, the 'e-Advisor Program' instigated by the Clerkship Director in EM Group, the 'member exclusive mentorship program' of the Emergency Medicine Residency Association, as well as peer-based mentoring. More so, we discuss the consensus recommendations developed by the Student Advising Task Force to guide both students planning to apply to EM and their advisors to ensure high-caliber advising.

Testing the comparative effects of physical activity advice by humans vs. computers in underserved populations: The COMPASS trial design, methods, and baseline characteristics

While physical inactivity is a key risk factor for a range of chronic diseases and conditions associated with aging, a significant proportion of midlife and older adults remain insufficiently active. This is particularly true for ethnic minority populations such as Latino adults for whom few culturally adapted programs have been developed and tested. The major objective of this 12-month cluster-randomized controlled trial is to test the comparative effectiveness of two linguistically and culturally adapted, community-based physical activity interventions with the potential for broad reach and translation. Ten local community centers serving a sizable number of Latino residents were randomized to receive one of two physical activity interventions. The Virtual Advisor program employs a computer-based embodied conversational agent named “Carmen” to deliver interactive, individually tailored physical activity advice and support. A similar intervention program is delivered by trained Peer Advisors. The target population consists of generally healthy, insufficiently active Latino adults ages 50years and older living within proximity to a designated community center. The major outcomes are changes in walking and other forms of physical activity measured via self-report and accelerometry. Secondary outcomes include physical function and well-being variables. In addition to these outcome analyses, comparative cost analysis of the two programs, potential mediators of intervention success, and baseline moderators of intervention effects will be explored to better determine which subgroups do best with which type of intervention. Here we present the study design and methods, including recruitment strategies and yield as well as study baseline characteristics.Trial Registration: clinicaltrial.gov Identifier=NCT02111213.

Expert or peer? Understanding the implications of virtual advisor identity on emergency rescuer empowerment in mobile psychological self-help services

Psychological self-help services on mobile devices play a vital role in supporting emergency rescuers who engage in highly stressful and self-devoting careers with frequent exposure to dangers and traumatic scenes right after disaster strikes. In this study, we propose and design a low-cost and widely deployable strategy for empowering emergency rescuers through an intelligent mobile psychological self-help tool. This tool will help reduce the gap between the limited number of qualified professional counsellors and the high demand for timely psychological support by rescuers. We start with a thorough investigation of user requirements, extant work, and relevant IS design theories to inform our system design choices, among which we identified that “virtual advisor identity” (VAI) needs further research. We then empirically examined how VAI influences the empowerment effect of ERMS. Involving 120 emergency rescuers who have just finished rescue tasks, our experiment shows that VAI has important effects on a user’s cognitive and emotional routes, which are significant empowering enablers that lead to positive empowerment outcomes. Interestingly, virtual peer advisor empowers users mostly through evoking emotional resonance from them, whereas virtual expert advisor is better at empowering users through cognitive channels. Important theoretical and practical implications of the findings are then discussed.

A Platform to Build Mobile Health Apps: The Personal Health Intervention Toolkit (PHIT).

Personal Health Intervention Toolkit (PHIT) is an advanced cross-platform software framework targeted at personal self-help research on mobile devices. Following the subjective and objective measurement, assessment, and plan methodology for health assessment and intervention recommendations, the PHIT platform lets researchers quickly build mobile health research Android and iOS apps. They can (1) create complex data-collection instruments using a simple extensible markup language (XML) schema; (2) use Bluetooth wireless sensors; (3) create targeted self-help interventions based on collected data via XML-coded logic; (4) facilitate cross-study reuse from the library of existing instruments and interventions such as stress, anxiety, sleep quality, and substance abuse; and (5) monitor longitudinal intervention studies via daily upload to a Web-based dashboard portal. For physiological data, Bluetooth sensors collect real-time data with on-device processing. For example, using the BinarHeartSensor, the PHIT platform processes the heart rate data into heart rate variability measures, and plots these data as time-series waveforms. Subjective data instruments are user data-entry screens, comprising a series of forms with validation and processing logic. The PHIT instrument library consists of over 70 reusable instruments for various domains including cognitive, environmental, psychiatric, psychosocial, and substance abuse. Many are standardized instruments, such as the Alcohol Use Disorder Identification Test, Patient Health Questionnaire-8, and Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder Checklist. Autonomous instruments such as battery and global positioning system location support continuous background data collection. All data are acquired using a schedule appropriate to the app’s deployment. The PHIT intelligent virtual advisor (iVA) is an expert system logic layer, which analyzes the data in real time on the device. This data analysis results in a tailored app of interventions and other data-collection instruments. For example, if a user anxiety score exceeds a threshold, the iVA might add a meditation intervention to the task list in order to teach the user how to relax, and schedule a reassessment using the anxiety instrument 2 weeks later to re-evaluate. If the anxiety score exceeds a higher threshold, then an advisory to seek professional help would be displayed. Using the easy-to-use PHIT scripting language, the researcher can program new instruments, the iVA, and interventions to their domain-specific needs. The iVA, instruments, and interventions are defined via XML files, which facilities rapid app development and deployment. The PHIT Web-based dashboard portal provides the researcher access to all the uploaded data. After a secure login, the data can be filtered by criteria such as study, protocol, domain, and user. Data can also be exported into a comma-delimited file for further processing. The PHIT framework has proven to be an extensible, reconfigurable technology that facilitates mobile data collection and health intervention research. Additional plans include instrument development in other domains, additional health sensors, and a text messaging notification system.

Do we have a chance for small-scale energy generation? The examples of technologies and devices for distributed energy systems in micro & small scale in Poland

Abstract This paper presents examples of technologies for distributed energy generation developed under the projects coordinated by the IFFM PAS in Gdańsk. These are CHP units (generating heat and electricity) for houses with a power from several to tens of kW and for municipalities in the form of the Municipal Energy Centers (with a capacity of several hundred kW up to several MW). A unique project, specializing in “energy-plus” technologies for residential houses and other buildings, which aims to build a Research Centre of PAS in Jabłonna is also presented,. These are key technologies for energy sector with respect to distributed generation. Additionally, the article discusses the conditions and opportunities for the development of energy generation or more broadly: civic energy generation in our country. Civic energy generation is a great vision in which the citizen becomes an entity and do not subject to the energy market, and additionally has its virtual advisor in the form of smart grid and data processing technologies in a “digital cloud”.

Employing Virtual Advisors in Preventive Care for Underserved Communities: Results From the COMPASS Study

Electronically delivered health promotion programs that are aimed primarily at educated, health-literate individuals have proliferated, raising concerns that such trends could exacerbate health disparities in the United States and elsewhere. The efficacy of a culturally and linguistically adapted virtual advisor that provides tailored physical activity advice and support was tested in low-income older adults. Forty inactive adults (92.5% Latino) 55 years of age and older were randomized to a 4-month virtual advisor walking intervention or a waitlist control. Four-month increases in reported minutes of walking/week were greater in the virtual advisor arm (mean increase = 253.5 ± 248.7 minutes/week) relative to the control (mean increase = 26.8 ± 67.0 minutes/week; p = .0008). Walking increases in the virtual advisor arm were substantiated via objectively measured daily steps (slope analysis p = .002). All but one intervention participant continued some interaction with the virtual advisor in the 20-week poststudy period (mean number of poststudy sessions = 14.0 ± 20.5). The results indicate that a virtual advisor delivering culturally and linguistically adapted physical activity advice led to meaningful 4-month increases in walking relative to control among underserved older adults. This interactive technology, which requires minimal language and computer literacy, may help reduce health disparities by ensuring that all groups benefit from e-health opportunities.

The Community College Website as Virtual Advisor

This study explored whether community college websites are a useful medium for providing knowledge relevant to degree completion. Ten community students used one of three community college websites to answer 10 questions about occupational degree programs. A facilitator asked participants to think aloud while using the website to answer these questions; their responses were video-recorded and coded in terms of correctness of answers and types of usability problems encountered. The findings suggest that participants frequently encountered problems with finding and understanding information needed to understand degree selection and completion. The content analysis of these problems yields several suggestions for improving the usability of community college websites for answering common questions about degree completion.

Towards the Development of A Virtual Counselor to Tackle Students' Exam Stress

Exam stress is a common predicament faced by students of all age groups and cultures. If improperly managed, it can lead to insomnia, depression, suicide and many other negative health implications for students at all levels of education. However, exam stress management gained relatively low attention from the society and academia. Stress in optimal level can stimulate students to achieve their personal best in their exams. However, excessive stress can be devastating for their well-being. Consequently, it is highly imperative that timely counselling services are made available, particularly during their exam period when there is a bursting demand to access these resources. In this study, we propose that a virtual intelligent university student advisor would be highly useful and effective in meeting this demand. We have developed an embodied conversational agent, ESCAP that simulates the facial animations and advice of a professional psychologist to support undergraduate students in stress management during their exams. In this paper, we discuss the system architecture of ESCAP as well as the practical and theoretical implications of the system. We conducted a number of pilot tests with 25 students to design the affective system and found in 200 samples that in general the voices of male advisors are considered as more pleasant and credible than female advisors'; on the other hand, the voices of female advisors are considered as more clear, dynamic and competent than male advisors by most users. These findings have important implications on the design of virtual psychologists, especially regarding the gender of the virtual advisor. System developers should consider the gender of virtual advisors carefully to maximize their effect on users. The next stage of the project involves large scale experiments testing ESCAP's impact on students. In these experiments, we plan to measure the stress level of students using both qualitative and quantitative measures such as heart beat and skin conductivity before and after their interactions with ESCAP.

Effectiveness of an Online Graduate Preparation Program

The present study reports the results of a controlled examination of the effectiveness of an online graduate preparation program, the Virtual Advisor. The effects of the Virtual Advisor were compared to a website preparation group and a wait-list control group. Results indicated that, compared to the control group, students who utilized the Virtual Advisor showed increased levels of knowledge regarding graduate school preparation and higher levels of graduate preparation self-efficacy and career decision self-efficacy. The website preparation condition also demonstrated an impact on some of these variables, but these effects were generally less consistent or robust. The nature of these findings in relation to the literature on graduate preparation is discussed, and the limitations and implications are outlined.

The virtual advisor program: linking students to mentors via the world wide web.

Emergency medicine (EM) is a popular specialty for medical students choosing a career. Many attend medical schools without an affiliated EM residency and lack both the formal mentorship and informal guidance provided by medical school advisors (or faculty) involved in an accredited EM training program. Others desire specialized advice based on geographic or specific academic interest. The authors describe user characteristics of a Web-based virtual advisor program that paired medical students with EM faculty advisors. Prospective users access the system from a link on the Society for Academic Emergency Medicine (SAEM) home page. On the initial visit, demographic information is collected. Faculty and student guidelines are provided. Students desiring individual advice may register for a virtual advisor who can assess career goals and qualifications. Volunteer faculty mentors are assigned on the basis of the student's geographic and demographic preferences and career aspirations. Encounters rely primarily on electronic and/or voice correspondence to suit the needs of the pair. A frequently asked question (FAQ) section provides answers to common questions and does not require registration. Two hundred sixty-four students (183 males, 75 females, 6 unspecified) from North American (87) and international (25) medical schools requested a virtual advisor. One hundred twenty-one faculty advisors from 56 U.S. medical schools participated (86 [71%] males; 35 [29%] females). Students indicated reasons they sought a virtual advisor. Qualitative feedback was generally positive from advisors and advisees. The implementation of the virtual advisor program enabled medical students to have access to experienced EM faculty career mentors.

The Virtual Advisor Program: Linking Students to Mentors via the World Wide Web

The Virtual Advisor Program: Linking Students to Mentors via the World Wide Web