Abstract
In the space exploration domain, limitations in the Deep Space Network and the lack of real-time communication capabilities will impact various aspects of future long duration exploration such as a multi-year mission to Mars. One dimension of interest is the connection between flight crews and their Earth-based social support system, their family, friends, and colleagues. Studies in ground-based analogs of Isolated and Confined Environments (ICE) such as Antarctica have identified sensory deprivation and social monotony as threats to crew psychological well-being. Given the importance of behavioral health to mission success and the extreme conditions of space travel, new methods of maintaining psycho-social health and social connections to support systems are critical. In this paper we explore the use of Virtual Environments (VEs) and Virtual Agents (VAs) as tools to facilitate asynchronous human-human communication, and counteract behavioral health challenges associated with prolonged isolation and deep space exploration.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution.
Buying options
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Learn about institutional subscriptionsPreview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
References
Castronova, E., Wagner, G.G.: Virtual Life Satisfaction. Interanational Review for Social Sciences 64(3) (2011)
Cartreine, J.A.: Risks for Future Depression in Astronauts: A Narrative Review of the Literature, http://humanresearchroadmap.nasa.gov/Evidence/other/BMed%20Additional%20Evidence.pdf (accessed January 2014)
Litz, B.T., Wang, J., Williams, L., Bryant, R., Engel Jr., C.C.: A Therapist-Assisted Internet Self-Help Program for Traumatic Stress. Professional Psychology: Research and Practice 35(6), 628–634 (2004)
Wu, P., Miller, C.: Interactive Phrasebook - Embedding Human Social Dynamics in Language Training. In: Proceedings of Second IEEE International Conference on Social Computing (SocialCom 2010), August 20-22, Minneapolis, MN (2010)
Miller, C., Wu, P., Funk, H., Wilson, P., Johnson, W.L.: A Computational Approach to Etiquette and Politeness: Initial Test Cases. In: Proceedings of 2006 BRIMS Conference, Baltimore, MD, May 15-18 (2006)
Bickmore, T.: Relational agents: effecting change through human–computer relationships. Unpublished Ph.D. Thesis, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA, USA (2003)
Wu, P., Miller, C., Ott, T.: Utilizing Human Computer Etiquette to Encourage Human-Machine Therapeutic Alliance. In: Proceedings of the 13th International Conference on Human-Computer Interaction, San Diego, CA, July 19-24 (2009)
Morie, J.: Re-Entry: Online worlds as a healing space for veterans. In: The Engineering Reality of Virtual Reality 21st Annual IS&T/SPIE Symposium, San Jose, CA (2009), http://people.ict.usc.edu/~morie/ComingHome/Morie-2009-2SPIE-FINAL.pdf
Schmer-Galunder, S., Sayer, N., Wu, P., Keller, P.: Continuous Anger Level Monitoring (CALM) - A mental health smartphone application. Paper submitted to SOTICS 2013 (2013)
Scherer, S., Stratou, G., Mahmoud, M., Boberg, J., Gratch, J., Rizzo, A., Morency, L.-P.: User-State Sensing for Virtual Health Agents and TeleHealth Applications. In: 10th IEEE International Conference on Automatic Face and Gesture Recognition, Shanghai, China (April 2013)
Rizzo, A., Strickland, D., Bouchard, S.: The Challenge of Using Virtual Reality in Telerehabilition. Telemedicine Journal and e-Health 10(2) (2005)
Morie, J.F., Haynes, E., Chance, E., Purohit, D.: Virtual Worlds and Avatars as the New Frontier of Telehealth Care. Stud. Health Technol. Inform. 181, 27–31 (2012)
Johnsen, K., Dickerson, R., Raij, A., Lok, B., Jackson, J., Shin, M., Hernandez, J., Stevens, A., Lind, D.S.: Experiences in Using Immersive Virtual Characters to Educate Medical Communication Skills. To Appear in Proceedings of IEEE Virtual Reality 2005 (VR 2005), Bonn, Germany (March 2005)
Morie, J.F., Antonisse, J., Bouchard, S., Chance, E.: Virtual worlds as a healing modality for returning soldiers and veter-ans. In: Studies in Health Technolology and Informatics: Annual Review of Cybertherapy and Telemedicine 2009 – Advanced Technologies in the Behavioral, Social and Neurosciences, vol. 144, pp. 273–276 (2009)
Zheng, D., Newgarden, K.: Rethinking Language Learning: Virtual Worlds as a Catalyst for Change. International Journal of Learning and Media 3(2), 13–36 (2011)
Johnson, W.L., Friedland, L., Schrider, P., Valente, A., Sheridan, S.: The Virtual Cultural Awareness Trainer (VCAT): Joint Knowledge Online’s (JKO’s) Solution to the Individual Operational Culture and Language Training Gap. In: Proceedings of ITEC 2011. Clarion Events. Describes the instructional design and implementation of Alelo’s VCAT courses, London (2011)
Bluemel, E., Hintze, A., Schulz, T., Schumann, M., et al.: Virtual environments for training of maintenance and service training tasks. In: Simulation Conference (2003)
Guidali, M., Duschau-Wicke, A., Broggi, S., Klamroth-Marganska, V., Nef, T., Riener, R.: A robotic system to train activities of daily living in the virtual environment. Medical & Biological Engineering & Computing 49(10), 1213–1223 (2011)
Parsons, T.D., Rizzo, A.A.: Affective Outcomes of Virtual Reality Exposure Therapy for Anxiety and Specific Phobias: A Meta-Analysis. Journal of Behavior Therapy and Experimental Psychiatry 39, 250–261 (2008)
Yee, N., Bailenson, J., Ducheneau, N.: The Proteus Effect: Implications of Transformed Digital Self-Representation on Online and Offline Behavior. Communication Research (2009)
Yee, N., Bailenson, J.N.: The Proteus Effect: The Effect of Transformed Self-Representation on Behavior. Human Communication Research 33, 271–290 (2007)
Kabat-Zinn, J.: Full catastrophe living: Using the wisdom of your body and mind to face stress, pain, and illness. Bantam Dell, New York (1990)
Morie, J.F.: Virtual Worlds as a Healing Modality for Returning Soldiers and Veterans. In: 14th Conference on CyberTherapy and CyberPsychology Proceedings. Mary Ann Liebert Publisher, Inc. (2009); CyberPsychology and Behavior 12(5)
Wu, P., Rye, J., Miller, C., Schmer-Galunder, S., Ott, T.: Non-Intrusive Detection of Psycho-Social Dimensions using Sociolinguistics. In: Third Workshop on Social Network Analysis in Applications (SNAA) of IEEE/ACM International Conference on Advances in Social Networks Analysis and Mining (ASONAM 2013), Niagara Falls, Canada, August 25-28 (2013)
Morie, J.F., Chance, E., Haynes, E., Purohit, D.: Embodied Conversational Agent Avatars in Virtual Worlds: Making Today’s Immersive Environments More Responsive to Participants. In: Hingston, P. (ed.) Believable Bots: Can Computers Play Like People, pp. 99–118. Springer (2012)
Jan, D., Roque, A., Leuski, A., Morie, J., Traum, D.: A Virtual Tour Guide for Virtual Worlds. In: Ruttkay, Z., Kipp, M., Nijholt, A., Vilhjálmsson, H.H. (eds.) IVA 2009. LNCS, vol. 5773, pp. 372–378. Springer, Heidelberg (2009)
Weitnauer, E., Thomas, N.M., Rabe, F., Kopp, S.: Intelligent agents living in social virtual environments – bringing max into second life. In: Prendinger, H., Lester, J.C., Ishizuka, M. (eds.) IVA 2008. LNCS (LNAI), vol. 5208, pp. 552–553. Springer, Heidelberg (2008)
Weizenbaum, J.: ELIZA — A Computer Program For the Study of Natural Language Communication Between Man And Machine. Communications of the ACM 9(1), 36–45 (1966), doi:10.1145/365153.365168
Wu, P., Miller, C.: Can Polite Computers Produce Better Human Performance? In: Proceedings of ACM Multimedia 2010 International Conference, Firenze, Italy, October 25-29 (2010)
Reeves, B., Nass, C.: The Media Equation. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge (1996)
Valtchanov, D., Barton, K.R., Ellard, C.: Restorative effects of virtual nature settings. Cyberpsycholo. Behav. Soc. Network. 13(5), 503–512 (2010)
Anik, L., Aknin, L.B., Norton, M.I., Dunn, E.W.: Harvard Business School Working Paper. Feeling Good about Giving: The Benefits (and Costs) of Self-Interested Charitable Behavior (2009), http://www.hbs.edu/faculty/Publication%20Files/10-012.pdf (accessed July 2013)
Zhang, Y., Epley, N.: Exaggerated, Mispredicted, and Misplaced: When “It’s the Thought that Counts” in Gift Exchanges. J. Experimental Psychology: General 141(4), 667–681 (2012), http://faculty.chicagobooth.edu/nicholas.epley/ZhangEpleyJEPG2012.pdf (accessed)
Konigsberg, I.: Film Theory and the New Science. Projections: The Journal for Movies and Mind 1(1), 1–24 (2007), http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/berghahn/proj/2007/00000001/00000001/art00002?token=005310af573d257025702c492b2f2d3125765747357c4e7547543c7e386f642f466f771614f4710e488
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2014 Springer International Publishing Switzerland
About this paper
Cite this paper
Wu, P. et al. (2014). Social Maintenance and Psychological Support Using Virtual Worlds. In: Kennedy, W.G., Agarwal, N., Yang, S.J. (eds) Social Computing, Behavioral-Cultural Modeling and Prediction. SBP 2014. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 8393. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-05579-4_48
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-05579-4_48
Publisher Name: Springer, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-319-05578-7
Online ISBN: 978-3-319-05579-4
eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)