Posted in Research and Development by Chris Wiltz on July 16, 2014
A study has shown that patients are more honest with a virtual human than when speaking to the real thing.
The researchers, led by Gale Lucas, a social psychologist at USC’s Institute for Creative Technologies (ICT), recruited 239 adults, ages 18-65, to interact with a virtual human as if they were being admitted into a clinic or hospital. Subjects interacted through SimSensei, an application developed at the ICT that renders a computer-generated person and uses realtime sensing and behavior recognition to detect signs of depression and other mental illness.
