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Human-Agent Dialogues on Health Topics - An Evaluation Study

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Highlights of Practical Applications of Agents, Multi-Agent Systems, and Sustainability - The PAAMS Collection (PAAMS 2015)

Part of the book series: Communications in Computer and Information Science ((CCIS,volume 524))

Abstract

A common conversation between an older adult and a nurse about health-related issues includes topics such as troubles with sleep, reasons for walking around nighttime, pain conditions, etc. This dialogue emerges from the participating human’s lines of thinking, their roles, needs and motives, while switching between topics as the dialogue unfolds. This paper presents a dialogue system that enables a human to engage in a dialogue with a software agent to reason about health-related issues in a home environment. The purpose of this work is to conduct a pilot evaluation study of a prototype system for human-agent dialogues, which is built upon a set of semantic models and integrated in a web application designed for older adults. Focus of the study was to receive qualitative results regarding purpose and content of the agent-based dialogue system, and to evaluate a method for the agent to evaluate its behavior based on the human agent’s perception of appropriateness of moves. The participants include five therapists and 11 older adults. The results show users’ feedback on the purpose of dialogues and the appropriateness of dialogues presented to them during the interaction with the software agent.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Computing Science, Umeå University, SE-901 87, Umeå, Sweden

    Jayalakshmi Baskar & Helena Lindgren

Authors
  1. Jayalakshmi Baskar
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  2. Helena Lindgren
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Jayalakshmi Baskar .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Departamento de Inteligencia Artificial, Universidad Politécnica de Madrid, Madrid, Spain

    Javier Bajo

  2. University of Southern Denmark, Odense, Denmark

    Kasper Hallenborg

  3. Faculty of Engineering Management, Poznan University, Poznan, Poland

    Pawel Pawlewski

  4. Departamento de Sistemas Informáticos y Computación, Polytechnic University of Valencia, Valencia, Spain

    Vicente Botti

  5. Fluminense Federal University, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

    Nayat Sánchez-Pi

  6. Universidad Nacional de Colombia, Manizales, CALDAS, Colombia

    Nestor Darío Duque Méndez

  7. Lab. Nacional de Energia e Geologia, Lisbon, Portugal

    Fernando Lopes

  8. Universidad Politécnica de Valencia, Valencia, Spain

    Vicente Julian

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Baskar, J., Lindgren, H. (2015). Human-Agent Dialogues on Health Topics - An Evaluation Study. In: Bajo, J., et al. Highlights of Practical Applications of Agents, Multi-Agent Systems, and Sustainability - The PAAMS Collection. PAAMS 2015. Communications in Computer and Information Science, vol 524. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-19033-4_3

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-19033-4_3

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-319-19032-7

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-319-19033-4

  • eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)

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