Neurodiverse Human-Machine Interaction and Collaborative Problem-Solving in Social VR

Patrick Nalepka, Nathan Caruana, David M. Kaplan, Rachel W. Kallen, Elizabeth Pellicano, Michael J. Richardson

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingConference contributionpeer-review

Abstract

Social motor coordination is an important mechanism responsible for creating shared understanding but can be a challenge for Autistic individuals. Social virtual reality (VR) provides an opportunity to create a safe and inclusive environment for which interactions can be augmented to promote social interactivity. Due to the bi-directional nature of social interaction and adaptation, we created a framework to explore social motor coordination with a virtual artificial agent which can exhibit human-like behaviors. In this experiment, we assessed the interactive behaviors of participants completing a collaborative problem-solving task with the agent using multidimensional cross-recurrence quantification analysis (mdCRQA). Our results show that participants who discovered novel solutions to the task exhibited greater coupling to the artificial agent regardless of participant characteristics. Future work will explore how social VR environments can be augmented to promote social coordination.

Original languageEnglish
Title of host publicationHAI 2022 - Proceedings of the 10th Conference on Human-Agent Interaction
EditorsChristoph Bartneck, Takayuki Kanda, Mohammad Obaid, Wafa Johal
Place of PublicationNew York
PublisherAssociation for Computing Machinery, Inc
Pages293-295
Number of pages3
ISBN (Electronic)9781450393232
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - Dec 2022
Externally publishedYes
Event10th Conference on Human-Agent Interaction, HAI 2022 - Christchurch, New Zealand
Duration: 5 Dec 20228 Dec 2022

Publication series

NameHAI 2022 - Proceedings of the 10th Conference on Human-Agent Interaction

Conference

Conference10th Conference on Human-Agent Interaction, HAI 2022
Country/TerritoryNew Zealand
CityChristchurch
Period5/12/228/12/22

Keywords

  • autism spectrum disorder (ASD)
  • collaborative problem-solving
  • coordination
  • social VR
  • virtual agents

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