VICTEC Virtual ICT with Empathic Characters Sibylle Enz Universität Bamberg 1st PROLEARN TWS /5 November 2004

Content 1.VICTEC: A new Approach for Anti-Bullying- Education 1. What is VICTEC? 2. The Bullying Problem 3. The VICTEC Application: FearNot! 2.Empathy and its Role in FearNot! 3.Empathy and Believability 4.Expressive Behaviour and Creating Empathy 5.Evaluation

1.1 What is VICTEC? EU Framework V project Virtual ICT with Empathic Characters 5 partners from UK, Portugal, Germany Goal: applying virtual drama and 3D- graphically embodied characters to PSE (bullying) Innovative: individual rather than collective

The Partners Centre for Virtual Environments, University of Salford (UK) University of Hertfordshire (UK) Instituto de Engenharia de Sistemas e Computadores (INESC-ID) (Portugal) Autor, Tecnologias Multimédia S.A. (Portugal) Institute of Theoretical Psychology, University of Bamberg (Germany)

1.2 The Bullying Problem 1.2 The Bullying Problem Repeated negative action that occurs regularly over time with the intention to hurt; imbalance of power between pupils (Olweus, 1999) Main types of bullying behaviour: - direct/physical (punching, kicking, …) - direct/verbal (nasty name calling) - relational (social exclusion, rumour spreading) Bullying roles: bully, victim, bully-victim, bystander No clear educational message  knowledge about social interaction, coping strategies, etc. needed

1.3 The VICTEC Application: FearNot! Fun with Empathic Agents to Reach Novel Outcomes in Teaching Virtual theatre application aimed at anti-bullying education for 8-12 age group Bullying episodeInteraction in library

1.3 The VICTEC Application: FearNot! Introduction (I): characters and school Bullying episode (1-3) In between episodes: interaction with victim character in resource room (coping) Educational message (F): after end of episode 3 Questionnaires on empathy and theory of mind (QA) 1 3 I 2 F QAQA COPE

2 Empathy and it’s Role in FearNot! Empathy: ”any process where the attended perception of the object’s state generates a state in the subject that is more applicable to the object’s state or situation than to the subject’s own prior state or situation” (Preston and de Waal, 2002)  Cognitive: understanding perceived object’s inner state  Affective: feeling something due to perceived object’s inner state Mediation of empathic processes via situation and/or expression

2 Empathy and it’s Role in FearNot! Importance of user engagement to reach the educational goal Via empathic relation between user and agent By empathising with the victim, the user acts as invisible friend during the interaction phases in between the bullying episodes - User is not present in the episodes - Advice and support rather than god-like power to solve the problem Empathy is promoted by believability of situation and agent expression

3 Empathy and Believability Believability: Extent to which a human is willing to suspend their disbelieve in a collection of graphical pixels and to see it as an autonomous entity with its own internal life (Bates, 1994) Believability via emotional expression: gesture, posture, facial expression, tone of voice Interpreted by others as signalling an inner (affective) state  communication mechanism (understanding goals and motives of others) Precondition for empathic processes between user and agent

4 Expressive Behaviour and Creating Empathy Believability through naturalism? - Dramatic approach: animated film & theatre - “Uncanny valley”: behaviour can not meet the high user expectations generated by naturalistic appearance  Cartoon-like FearNot! characters

4 Expressive Behaviour and Creating Empathy Facial expressions - Stereotyped expressions instead of nodes on the facial mesh - Triggered by the internal emotional system of the agent

4 Expressive Behaviour and Creating Empathy Posture - Exaggerated posture indicates confident, happy, sad, etc. mood Voice - Very difficult to solve with unscripted dramas - Voices constructed from pre-recorded human input: large real-time data base in conflict with 3D real time rendering system

4 Expressive Behaviour and Creating Empathy Realisation of expression in FearNot! - Unscripted drama: action (expressive behaviour) is generated by interaction between agents - Agent reacts to an event/object following appraisal rules (Ortony, Clore & Collins, 1988)  immediate reactions and goals - Influence of memory and personality (bullying types) - Emotional expression is triggered by a rather sophisticated emotional model  coherent behaviour and empathy towards the agent

5 Evaluation – Main Research Questions Does the software meet the technical and usability requirements? Does the interaction with FearNot affect children’s (views on) bullying behaviour? Can FearNot! help to improve the empathic abilities of the child users? Do children actually develop empathy towards the characters in the scenarios?

5 Evaluation - Design Large-scale evaluation event in June 2004 involving 400 children from Hertfordshire, UK Pre-/Post-Tests in UK/P/D involving 100 children each Iterative usability evaluation during the development of FearNot

5 Evaluation – Preliminary Results Goal: evaluation of Goal: evaluation of - Character attributes (believability, appearance, movement) - Storyline believability - Empathic feelings created between the child user and the animated characters

5 Evaluation – Preliminary Results UK/P sample N=127 Aged 8-13 (M=9.83; SD=1.04) 64♂ & 63♀ 1= positive response 5= negative response Believability Movements 3.04 Realism Movements 3.11 Smoothness Movements 2.82 Attractiveness school environment2.1 Match school with characters2.0 Sadness towards John (victim) 95% Sadness towards Luke (bully) 5%5%5%5% Sadness towards Martina (narrator)0% Anger towards John (victim)13% Anger towards Luke (bully) 85% Anger towards Martina (narrator)2%

5 Evaluation – Preliminary Results UK/P sample - Character movements rated rather poorly - School environment and match with characters rated more highly - Empathy: majority felt sad for victim and angry for bully - Gender issues: boys empathise more with males than females while girls empathise with both genders

Further information on the project… Ruth Aylett (project coordinator) Sibylle Enz, Carsten Zoll, Harald Schaub The Project Website