Social Agents for Learning in Virtual Environments - GALA2016

Social Agents for Learning in Virtual Environments

Agnese Augello1, Manuel Gentile2 , Frank Dignum3

1ICAR - National Research Council of Italy, 2ITD - National Research Council of Italy

3Utrecht University, The Netherlands

Outline

Learning social and communication skills

Social skills training and SGs

The proposed solution: SALVE

Architecture

Some examples

Why social skills?

interpersonal, social and

communicative competences

social, psychological

and occupational well-being are

ensured by

academic or professional success are predicted by

Social skills training theories

••Behavioral shaping Skinner

••Psychotherapy by Reciprocal Inhibition Wolpe

••Assertion or assertiveness training

Wolpe & Lazarus

••Social learning theory Bandura

A classical social skills training procedure

Assessment

Direct Instruction and Coaching

Modeling

Role PlayingHomework assignment & Follow-up

Role Playing

to practice the desired behaviours in a controlled setting

problems••difficult ••expensive

Serious games

e.g. Scripted based design

Social and communication skills training & SG

Behavioural oriented Serious

Games

Behavioural oriented Serious

Games Design

Skinner

Wolpe

Wolpe & Lazarus

Bandura

Behavioural oriented Serious Games Design

Pros Cons

Knowledge design and

reuse

The organization of the interaction facilitates the

designof the scenariohides the knowledge at its base

Interaction with the

virtual agentThere is a fine control of the

scenario (e.g. the conversation)

The agent behaviour are predetermined and the

interaction becomes repetitive after few uses.

Player Experience

Specific user's behaviours can be trained

Players have no freedom. The game experience is quite different from a real one

Role of social context in conversation in communication

The dialogue is a joint activity that must consider both individual and social processes

Different communication strategies can be used according to the specific social context

The same sentence can be used with a different meaning in different context and can raise different social effects

“You should take a cat”

A different approach to implement the conversational agent: SALVE

Putting social practices at the heart of the deliberation allows for more efficient

planning (Dignum and Dignum, 2014)

Social Agents for Learning in Virtual Environments

The social practice model

Chatbot as a possible solution?

1966 – Eliza

1988 – Jabberwacky

1992 - Dr. Sbaitso

1995 - A.L.I.C.E.

2001 - Activebuddy’s Smarterchild

2011 - Watson, Siri

2012 - Google Now

2015 - Amazon Alexa , Microsoft Cortana

2016 – More than 18.000 Bots on Im, Messanger and Facebook

Chatbot as a possible solution?

Strength• It is possible to quickly create a

conversational agent, avoiding natural language processing issues

• It is easy to define the chatbotbehaviour through the design of proper question answers modules (Alice -> AIML categories)

Weaknesses• Chatbots lacks the ability to keep an

overview and a structure of the entire conversation.

• In AIML the dialogue is managed keeping track of the last conversation exchange and setting conversation topics.

• It is difficult to design chatbots able to correctly manage social conversational practices.

<category><pattern>MY NAME IS *</pattern>

<that>HELLO THERE WHAT IS YOUR NAME</that><template>Nice to meet you <star /></template>

</category>

Architecture of the SALVE system


Using chatbot just as aninteraction interfaceExtend the AIML language thatdescribes the chatbot ruleswith ”social” tags such that itkeeps track where it is in thesocial practice (towards state based dialogue)


Integrate chatbot with a rulebased engine (DROOLS) tokeep track of the agent statesand guide it the socialpractice

How “social practice” guides SG design



start end

greetings

present

Get patientdata

Determinesymptoms

Determinetreatment

Communicate!


start end

greetings

present

Get patientdata

Determinesymptoms

Determinetreatment

Examples of S-AIML

Example rules: Timely greetingslead to positive emotions

rule "GreetingsReceivedInTime"

when

$startScene:EnterScene(scene.name=="greetings")

$g:GreetingsReceived(this after[0ms,20000ms] $startScene )

then

controller.print($startScene.getScene().getName());

controller.print("greeting received in the first 20 seconds after the start of the scene");

OOCHappenedEvent he=new OOCHappenedEvent();

don(he,DesirableEvent.class);

don(he,ProspectedRelevantEvent.class);

insert(he);

controller.print("greeting marked as happened desirable prospected event");

insert(new ChangeOfSceneFromGoal());

end

Example rules: Timely greetingslead to positive emotions

rule "GreetingsReceivedInTime"

when


$g:GreetingsReceived(this after[0ms,20000ms] $startScene )

then

controller.print($startScene.getScene().getName());

controller.print("greeting received in the first 20 seconds after the start of the scene");

OOCHappenedEvent he=new OOCHappenedEvent();

don(he,DesirableEvent.class);

don(he,ProspectedRelevantEvent.class);

insert(he);

controller.print("greeting marked as happened desirable prospected event");

insert(new ChangeOfSceneFromGoal());

end

rule "DesirableEventHappened"when

OOCHappenedEvent(this isAProspectedIrrelevantEvent,this isA DesirableEvent)

$agent:Emotion(this isA Agent)then

controller.print("captured desirable event");$agent.setJoy($agent.getJoy()+1);controller.print("increase joy");controller.setJoy($agent.getJoy());

end

Example rules: Greetings not received in time lead to negative emotions

rule "GreetingsNotReceivedInTime"

when


(not(GreetingsReceived(this after[0ms,20000ms] $startScene ))

then

controller.print("greeting not received in the first 20 seconds after the start of thescene");

OOCNotHappenedEvent nhe=new OOCNotHappenedEvent();

don(nhe,DesirableEvent.class);

don(nhe,ProspectedRelevantEvent.class);

insert(nhe);

controller.print("dummy event marked as not happened desirable prospected event");

controller.respond("why you did not say hello!");

end

Example rules: Greetings not received in time lead to negative emotions

rule "GreetingsNotReceivedInTime"

when


(not(GreetingsReceived(this after[0ms,20000ms] $startScene ))

then

controller.print("greeting not received in the first 20 seconds after the start of thescene");

OOCNotHappenedEvent nhe=new OOCNotHappenedEvent();

don(nhe,DesirableEvent.class);

don(nhe,ProspectedRelevantEvent.class);

insert(nhe);

controller.print("dummy event marked as not happened desirable prospected event");

controller.respond("why you did not say hello!");

end

rule "DesirableProspectedEventNotHappened"when

$d:OOCNotHappenedEvent(this isA ProspectedRelevantEvent, this isA DesirableEvent)

$agent:Emotion(this isA Agent)then

controller.print("captured not happened desirable event");$agent.setDisappointment($agent.getDisappointment()+1);controller.print("increased Disappointment");controller.setDisappointment($agent.getDisappointment());

end

Empathic opportunities are givenand can be taken or ignored

SALVE architecture

SALVE architecture

SALVE architecture

SALVE architecture

Conclusion and future work 1/2

The proposed solution:••puts social practice at the heart of the deliberative process of

an agent;••allows for a dynamic activation of categories, depending on the

current social practice, the pursued plan, the on-going activity, and finally, at the lowest level the agent’s identity;

••allows for a great flexibility in the conversation while at the same time simplifying the formalization of the chatbot KB;

••ensures to the player a greater freedom in sentences expression, and the possibility to experiment dynamic scenarios and different roles;

••Lets the player actively create a conversation rather than choose moves

Conclusion and future work 2/2

Future work:••finalize the implementation of the serious game according to a proper learning design approach;••Improve the social practices representations;••create a tool to support the designer••validate the proposed approach

Social Agents for Learning in Virtual Environments - GALA2016

Education