"Pedagogical Agents as Social Actors"

3/23/2003: 10:30am - 12:00pm
11th Floor Large Conference Room

Abstract: Social psychologists such as Reeves and Nass have argued that people tend to relate to media much as they relate to human beings. Animated synthetic agents have been developed to exploit this tendency. Such agents raise expectations that they can function as social actors - able to engage in social interactions with people and other agents. This presentation will describe efforts at enabling synthetic agents, particularly pedagogical agents, to interact in a manner that is sensitive to social expectations and conventions. The social intelligence that this requires is of practical value in promoting learner motivation and engagement. Finally I will discuss efforts to enable agents to act in a dramatic sense - to portray roles and convey emotion. This is an essential part of human social interaction, which often involves the portrayal of roles. And the application of theatrical principles to agent behavior results in agent behavior that is more consistent and understandable, and user experiences that are more engaging.

About Lewis Johnson: W. Lewis Johnson is director of the Center for Advanced Research in Technology for Education (CARTE) at the University of Southern California's Information Sciences Institute. His work involves the application of artificial intelligence to education, training, and human-computer interaction generally. He is past chair of the ACM Special Interest Group for Artificial Intelligence, and past president of the International Artificial Intelligence in Education Society. He served as co-chair of the First International Conference on Autonomous Agents, program co-chair of the First International Joint Conference on Autonomous Agents and Multi-Agent Systems, and program co-chair of the International Conference on Intelligent User Interfaces.

Last updated: Mon Jun 19 17:44:06 2006