Re=
sponsive
Virtual Human Technology
Research Activities
Investigated use of responsive virtual =
human
software for interaction training and assessment. Applications deve=
loped
or in progress include assessing medical practitioners in history taking for
both asthmatic and pediatric patients, training civilian police officers=
in
how to handle mentally disturbed individuals, and training telephone and fi=
eld
interview staff in obtaining respondent participation.
Developed virtual vignettes for a project designed to identify the
underlying neurocognitive and emotional regulatory mechanisms in behavio=
ral
disorders that at-risk
youth and prison inmates often present and to understand how these
mechanisms influence treatment outcomes.
As part of a set of studies to assess social functioning deficits in childh=
ood
cancer survivors as compared to healthy children, developed a standardiz=
ed
instrument for facial expression recognition employing Facial Action Co=
ding
System action units to systematically manipulate facial expressions, and an=
easy-to-use
interface for the target pediatric population.
In a study comparing (i) pre-deployment stress
inoculation training (PreSIT) involving =
coping
skills training comprised of attentional retraining and focused breathing w=
ith
biofeedback against (ii) the current best practice of providing educational
materials on combat and operational stress control, developed a multimed=
ia
stressor environment for simulating stress exposure for participants to
practice learned coping skills.
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Selected
Publications =
Hubal, R.C., Kizakevich, P.N., Guinn, C.I., Merino, K.D., & West, S.L.
(2000). The
virtual standardized patient: Simulated patient-practitioner dialogue for patient inte=
rview
training. In J.D. Westwood, H.M. Hoffman, G.T. Mogel, R.A. Robb, & =
D.
Stredney (Eds.), Envisioning Healing: Interactive Technology and the
Patient-Practitioner Dialogue (pp. 133-138). Amsterdam: IOS Press.
Frank, G., Guinn, C., Hubal, R., Pope, P., Stanford, M., & Lamm-Weisel,=
D.
(2002). JUST-TALK: An application of responsive virtual human
technology. Proceedings of the Interservice/Industry Training, Simulati=
on
and Education Conference (pp. 773-779). Arlington, VA: National Defense
Industrial Association.
Hubal, R.C., Frank, G.A., & Guinn, C.I. (2003). Lessons
learned in modeling schizophrenic and depressed responsive virtual humans f=
or
training. Proceedings of the Intelligent User Interface Conference (pp.
85-92). New York, NY: ACM Press.
Paschall, M.J., Fishbein, D.H., Hubal, R.C., & Eldreth, D. (2005). Psychometric properties of virtual reality vignette perfo=
rmance
measures: A novel approach for assessing adolescents' social competency ski=
lls.
Health Education Research: Theory and Practice, 20(1), 61-70.
Kizakevich, P., Furberg, R., Hubal, R., & Frank, G. (2006). Virtual
reality simulation for multicasualty triage tra=
ining.
Proceedings of the Interservice/Industry Training, Simulation and Education
Conference (pp. 170-177). Arlington, VA: National Defense Industrial
Association.
Link, M.W., Armsby, P.P., Hubal, R.C., & Guinn, C.I. (2006). Acce=
ssibility
and acceptance of responsive virtual human technology as a survey interview=
er
training tool. Computers in Human Behavior, 22(3), 412-426.
Hubal, R., Kizakevich, P., & Furberg, R. (2007). Synthetic
characters in health-related applications. In S. V=
aidya,
L.C. Jain, & H. Yoshida (Eds.), Advanced Computational Intelligence
Paradigms in Healthcare 2 (pp. 5-26). Heidelberg, Germany: Springer-Verlag.
Hubal, R. (2008a). Embodied tutors for interaction skills simulation trainin=
g.
International Journal of Virtual Reality, 7(1), 1-8.
Hubal, R. (2008b). Criteria
for use of synthetic characters. Proceedings of the Interservice/Indust=
ry
Training, Simulation and Education Conference (pp. 1274-1283). Arlington, V=
A:
National Defense Industrial Association.
Hubal, R.C., Evens, N.R., FitzGerald, D.P., Hardy, K.K., Willard, V.W., &am=
p;
Bonner, M.J. (2008). Implementation of FACS for synthetic characters for use in
studying facial expression recognition by survivors of childhood cancer.
Annual Review of Cybertherapy and Telemedicine,=
6,
35-40.
Hubal, R.C., Fishbein, D.H., Sheppard, M.S, Paschall, M.J., Eldreth, D.L.,
& Hyde, C.T. (2008). How do varied populations interact with embodied conversa=
tional
agents? Findings from inner-city adolescents and prisoners. Computers in
Human Behavior, 24(3), 1104-1138.
Hubal, R., Kizakevich=
, P.,
McLean, A., & Hourani, L. (2010). A
multimedia environment for stressing warfighters before they deploy.
Proceedings of the Interservice/Industry Training, Simulation and Education
Conference (pp. 1688-1696). Arlington, VA: National Defense Industrial
Association.