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Virtual Standardized Patient |
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The Virtual Reality (VR)
Effective interview skills are a core competency for psychiatry residents and developing psychotherapists. Although schools commonly make use of standardized patients to teach interview skills, the diversity of the scenarios standardized patients can characterize is limited by availability of human actors. Further, there is the economic concern related to the time and money needed to train standardized patients. Perhaps most damaging is the "standardization" of standardized patients-will they in fact consistently proffer psychometrically reliable and valid interactions with the training clinicians.
Virtual Human Agent (VHA) technology has evolved to a point where researchers may begin developing mental health applications that make use of virtual reality patients. The ICT Virtual Patient project is a preliminary attempt at what we believe to be a large application area. Herein we describe an ongoing study of our virtual standardized patients (VSPs). We are developing an approach that allows novice mental health clinicians to conduct an interview with a virtual character that emulates an a character with a DSM IV TR disorder. This study illustrates the ways in which a variety of core research components developed at the University of Southern California facilitates the rapid development of mental health applications.
Goals
The goals of the Virtual Patient project are as follows:
- Build virtual standardized patient applications (including various psychopathology modules), with design input from mental health personnel
- Establish the psychometric properties of each virtual standardized patient to ensure that it includes valid, reliable, and domain specific aspects of psychological functioning
- Use specific neuroimaging and psychophysiological technologies while persons are interacting with the virtual standardized patient, in an attempt to understand how the activation of particular brain areas is related to given interactions
- Measuring eyeblink responses to startle probes occurring at short and long latencies following the onset of Black compared with White virtual standardized patients. Attempt to examine affective processes associated with both the activation and potential control of race bias
Differences Between This Project and Others in the Field
This project differs from others in the following ways:
- It focuses on making believable, interpretable, and responsive virtual humans that deviate from the norm and express both rational and irrational behaviors (Other groups typically focus on developing rational virtual humans that mimic rationality.)
- It creates responsive virtual humans that co-habit a virtual world with a human.
- It seeks to model realistic, well-crafted behaviors for virtual humans.
Related Projects
Virtual Humans
Team Members
Patrick Kenny, MS (Co-Project Investigator)
Thomas Parsons, PhD (Co-Project Investigator)
Albert “Skip” Rizzo, PhD (Co-Project Investigator)
External Collaborators
Celestine A. Ntuen, PhD
Caroly S. Pataki, M.D.
Michele T. Pato, M.D.
Cheryl St-George, M.S.
Jeffery Sugar, M.D.
Contact Name
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