The evolving field of persuasive and behavior change technology is increasingly targeted at influencing behavior in the area of health and wellness. This paper provides an empirical review of 16 years (85 papers) of literature on persuasive technology for health and wellness to: (1.) answer important questions regarding the effectiveness of persuasive technology for health and wellness, (2.) summarize and highlight trends in the technology design, research methods, motivational strategies, theories, and health behaviors targeted by research to date, (3.) uncover pitfalls of existing persuasive technological interventions for health and wellness, and (4.) suggest directions for future research.

https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/1460458216650979

Persuasive technology for health and wellness: State-of-the-art and emerging trends.

We developed an intelligent tutoring system (ITS) that aims to promote engagement and learning by dynamically detecting and responding to students' boredom and disengagement. The tutor uses a commercial eye tracker to monitor a student's gaze patterns and identify when the student is bored, disengaged, or is zoning out. The tutor then attempts to reengage the student with dialog moves that direct the student to reorient his or her attentional patterns towards the animated pedagogical agent embodying the tutor. We evaluated the efficacy of the gaze-reactive tutor in promoting learning, motivation, and engagement in a controlled experiment where 48 students were tutored on four biology topics with both gaze-reactive and non-gaze-reactive (control condition) versions of the tutor. The results indicated that: (a) gaze-sensitive dialogs were successful in dynamically reorienting students' attentional patterns to the important areas of the interface, (b) gaze-reactivity was effective in promoting learning gains for questions that required deep reasoning, (c) gaze-reactivity had minimal impact on students' state motivation and on self-reported engagement, and (d) individual differences in scholastic aptitude moderated the impact of gaze-reactivity on overall learning gains. We discuss the implications of our findings, limitations, future work, and consider the possibility of using gaze-reactive ITSs in classrooms.

/pdf/gaze-tutor-a-gaze-reactive-intelligent-tutoring-system-3iqoaynodm.pdf

Gaze tutor: A gaze-reactive intelligent tutoring system

The screen shows a bag of popcorn on a table. Several kernels have fallen from the bag. An adult, watching with preschool children, asks a question about the picture: "What will happen to the popcorn if I pick up the television set and turn it upside down?" A lot of kids say that the rest of the popcorn will spill out of the bag. While interesting, this mistake is not really surprising. Children often take television literally. They'll soon be older, and will be wise enough to know better.

Media Equation 研究の背景と動向

Natural language processing (NLP) techniques can be used to make inferences about peoples’ mental states from what they write on Facebook, Twitter and other social media. These inferences can then be used to create online pathways to direct people to health information and assistance and also to generate personalized interventions. Regrettably, the computational methods used to collect, process and utilize online writing data, as well as the evaluations of these techniques, are still dispersed in the literature. This paper provides a taxonomy of data sources and techniques that have been used for mental health support and intervention. Specifically, we review how social media and other data sources have been used to detect emotions and identify people who may be in need of psychological assistance; the computational techniques used in labeling and diagnosis; and finally, we discuss ways to generate and personalize mental health interventions. The overarching aim of this scoping review is to highlight areas of research where NLP has been applied in the mental health literature and to help develop a common language that draws together the fields of mental health, human-computer interaction and NLP.

/pdf/natural-language-processing-in-mental-health-applications-2ohkte5or6.pdf

Natural language processing in mental health applications using non-clinical texts†

We discuss issues in designing virtual humans for applications that require long-term voluntary use and the problem of maintaining engagement with users over time. Concepts and theories related to engagement from a variety of disciplines are reviewed. We describe a platform for conducting studies into long-term interactions between humans and virtual agents and present the results of two longitudinal, randomized, controlled experiments in which the effect of manipulations of agent behavior on user engagement was assessed.

/pdf/maintaining-engagement-in-long-term-interventions-with-wahkzrgrv5.pdf

Maintaining engagement in long-term interventions with relational agents

Cueing strategies, such as real-time reminders, are among the most effective methods of persuading individuals to perform healthy behaviors such as taking their medication and exercising. However, these reminders often represent a task interruption for users who are engaged in work activities. This paper presents the results of a study which explores strategies for interrupting users at work to perform a healthy behavior, in which the primary outcome of interest is long-term adherence to a desired health behavior change regimen. We find that the degree of perceived politeness of interruptions is positively correlated with predicted long-term adherence, but negatively correlated with short-term compliance. We also find that, among several interruption coordination strategies previously explored in the literature, empathic interruptions are superior overall in gaining both short-term compliance and long-term adherence.

/pdf/persuasion-task-interruption-and-health-regimen-adherence-yvbt6z061c.pdf

Persuasion, task interruption and health regimen adherence

https://www.ccs.neu.edu/home/bickmore/publications/PervasiveNMobile.pdf

Context awareness in a handheld exercise agent

In this paper we describe the design of a relational agent interface for handheld computers and the results of a study exploring the effectiveness of different user-agent interaction modalities Four different agent output modalities-text only, static image plus text, animated, and animated plus nonverbal speech-are compared and their impact on the ability of the agent to establish a social bond with the user, the perceived credibility of information delivered, and user acceptance is evaluated Subjects ranked the two animated versions of the system higher on all measures

/pdf/modalities-for-building-relationships-with-handheld-computer-32rhq6tlma.pdf

Modalities for building relationships with handheld computer agents

Virtual health counseling agents on mobile devices need to be able to interrupt their users when it is time for them to engage in healthy behaviors, such as scheduled medication taking or exercise However, these real-time reminders often represent task interruptions for individuals who are engaged in work activities This paper presents the results of a study which compares four strategies used by a virtual agent on a PDA for interrupting users at work to perform a healthy behavior We find that, among several interruption coordination strategies previously explored in the HCI literature, empathic interruptions are superior overall in gaining both short-term compliance and self-reported desire to continue working with the agent

/pdf/negotiating-task-interruptions-with-virtual-agents-for-3n95g5enme.pdf

Negotiating task interruptions with virtual agents for health behavior change

We have developed an animated PDA-based advisor that can engage sedentary adults in dialogues about their physical activity throughout the day. An integrated accelerometer enables the advisor to initiate interactions and provide real-time feedback. Results of preliminary usability testing of interaction modalities are presented and a planned efficacy study using free-living sedentary adults is described.

Daniel Mauer

Papers

Persuasion, task interruption and health regimen adherence

Context awareness in a handheld exercise agent

Modalities for building relationships with handheld computer agents

Negotiating task interruptions with virtual agents for health behavior change

A handheld animated advisor for physical activity promotion.