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Article

Effects of Virtual Humans' Gender and Spoken Accent on Users' Perceptions of Expertise in Mental Wellness Conversations

Authors:

Pedro Guillermo Feijóo-García,

Alexandre Gomes de Siqueira,

Felix Hamza-LupAuthors Info & Claims

IVA '21: Proceedings of the 21st ACM International Conference on Intelligent Virtual Agents

Pages 68 - 75

https://doi.org/10.1145/3472306.3478367

Published: 14 September 2021 Publication History

Editorial Notes

The authors have requested minor, non-substantive changes to the VoR and, in accordance with ACM policies, a Corrected VoR was published on September 29, 2021. For reference purposes the VoR may still be accessed via the Supplemental Material section on this page.

Abstract

In the context of mental wellness support, trust and intimacy between a counselor and a patient are necessary to converge healing processes positively. However, convincing students to trust a virtual human for topics regarding mental wellness is a complex problem that requires understanding students' experiences. Based on research that discusses mental health as a concerning topic regarding Computer Science (CS) students, this paper investigates how undergraduate computing-related students perceive virtual humans' expertise on mental wellness support based on demographic resemblance on spoken accent and gender. Four virtual human counselors were developed to conduct the study, as 58 undergraduate computing-related students from two North American universities were recruited and assessed. Our findings suggest that students were less inclined to interact with a male virtual human than a female one. Also, that spoken accents can impact students' perceptions of expertise under students' multilingualism.

Supplementary Material

3478367-vor (3478367-vor.pdf)

Version of Record for "Effects of Virtual Humans' Gender and Spoken Accent on Users' Perceptions of Expertise in Mental Wellness Conversations" by Feijóo-García et al., Proceedings of the 21st ACM International Conference on Intelligent Virtual Agents (IVA '21).

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Cited By

Hercula SShank DCundiff JWright D(2024)Bias toward the Accents of Virtual AssistantsJournal of Language and Social Psychology10.1177/0261927X24129161143:5-6(691-716)Online publication date: 3-Nov-2024
https://doi.org/10.1177/0261927X241291611
Feijóo-García PWrenn CGomes de Siqueira AGhosh RStuart JYao HLok B(2024)Exploring the Effects of User-Agent and User-Designer Similarity in Virtual Human Design to Promote Mental Health Intentions for College StudentsACM Transactions on Applied Perception10.1145/368982222:1(1-41)Online publication date: 28-Nov-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3689822
Feijóo-García PWrenn CKalogeras SPayne CLok BOmojokun O(2024)Effects of Gender Synchrony in User-Agent Interactions: Integrating the Designer as a Product Cue in Virtual Human Design for Mental Health SupportProceedings of the 12th International Conference on Human-Agent Interaction10.1145/3687272.3688326(123-131)Online publication date: 24-Nov-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3687272.3688326
Show More Cited By

Index Terms

Effects of Virtual Humans' Gender and Spoken Accent on Users' Perceptions of Expertise in Mental Wellness Conversations
1. Computing methodologies
  1. Computer graphics
    1. Graphics systems and interfaces
      1. Virtual reality

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cover image ACM Conferences

IVA '21: Proceedings of the 21st ACM International Conference on Intelligent Virtual Agents

September 2021

238 pages

ISBN:9781450386197

DOI:10.1145/3472306

Copyright © 2021 ACM.

Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected]

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Published: 14 September 2021

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IVA '21: ACM International Conference on Intelligent Virtual Agents

September 14 - 17, 2021

Virtual Event, Japan

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Cited By

Hercula SShank DCundiff JWright D(2024)Bias toward the Accents of Virtual AssistantsJournal of Language and Social Psychology10.1177/0261927X24129161143:5-6(691-716)Online publication date: 3-Nov-2024
https://doi.org/10.1177/0261927X241291611
Feijóo-García PWrenn CGomes de Siqueira AGhosh RStuart JYao HLok B(2024)Exploring the Effects of User-Agent and User-Designer Similarity in Virtual Human Design to Promote Mental Health Intentions for College StudentsACM Transactions on Applied Perception10.1145/368982222:1(1-41)Online publication date: 28-Nov-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3689822
Feijóo-García PWrenn CKalogeras SPayne CLok BOmojokun O(2024)Effects of Gender Synchrony in User-Agent Interactions: Integrating the Designer as a Product Cue in Virtual Human Design for Mental Health SupportProceedings of the 12th International Conference on Human-Agent Interaction10.1145/3687272.3688326(123-131)Online publication date: 24-Nov-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3687272.3688326
Wong NJeong SReddy MStamatis CLattie EJacobs M(2024)Voice Assistants for Mental Health Services: Designing Dialogues with Homebound Older AdultsProceedings of the 2024 ACM Designing Interactive Systems Conference10.1145/3643834.3661536(844-858)Online publication date: 1-Jul-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3643834.3661536
Choi DPark JLoeser MSeo K(2024)Improving counseling effectiveness with virtual counselors through nonverbal compassion involving eye contact, facial mimicry, and head-noddingScientific Reports10.1038/s41598-023-51115-y14:1Online publication date: 4-Jan-2024
https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-023-51115-y
Knob PPinho GSilva GMontanha RPeres VAraujo VMusse S(2024)Surveying the evolution of virtual humans expressiveness toward real humansComputers & Graphics10.1016/j.cag.2024.104034123(104034)Online publication date: Oct-2024
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cag.2024.104034
Ghosh RFeijóo-García PStuart JWrenn CLok B(2023)Evaluating face gender cues in virtual humans within and beyond the gender binaryFrontiers in Virtual Reality10.3389/frvir.2023.12514204Online publication date: 24-Aug-2023
https://doi.org/10.3389/frvir.2023.1251420
Feijóo-García PWrenn CStuart JDe Siqueira ALok B(2023)Participatory Design of Virtual Humans for Mental Health Support Among North American Computer Science Students: Voice, Appearance, and the Similarity-attraction EffectACM Transactions on Applied Perception10.1145/361396120:3(1-27)Online publication date: 20-Sep-2023
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3613961
Kruse LMostajeran FSteinicke F(2023)The Influence of Virtual Agent Visibility in Virtual Reality Cognitive TrainingProceedings of the 2023 ACM Symposium on Spatial User Interaction10.1145/3607822.3614526(1-9)Online publication date: 13-Oct-2023
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3607822.3614526
Wei CKim YKuzminykh A(2023)The Bot on Speaking Terms: The Effects of Conversation Architecture on Perceptions of Conversational AgentsProceedings of the 5th International Conference on Conversational User Interfaces10.1145/3571884.3597139(1-16)Online publication date: 19-Jul-2023
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3571884.3597139
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