Designing Socially Intelligent Virtual Companions
This work addresses the need for more socially engaging virtual companions in learning environments, though it appears incremental as it builds on existing research with a focus on curiosity.
The paper tackles the problem of enhancing virtual companions' social intelligence by infusing curiosity into their mental model to improve believability and influence user activities, with effectiveness demonstrated through a preliminary field study.
Virtual companions that interact with users in a socially complex environment require a wide range of social skills. Displaying curiosity is simultaneously a factor to improve a companion's believability and to unobtrusively affect the user's activities over time. Curiosity represents a drive to know new things. It is a major driving force for engaging learners in active learning. Existing research work pays little attention in curiosity. In this paper, we enrich the social skills of a virtual companion by infusing curiosity into its mental model. A curious companion residing in a Virtual Learning Environment (VLE) to stimulate user's curiosity is proposed. The curious companion model is developed based on multidisciplinary considerations. The effectiveness of the curious companion is demonstrated by a preliminary field study.