Abstract
Avatars—digital representations of humans—may be a useful tool in a wide range of areas, such as education, advertising, communication, and health. The overarching goal of the present research was to examine the use of avatars in the context of evidential and clinical interviewing, in the hope that this novel technology could facilitate adults’ memory performance and enhance their disclosure of sensitive information. The first specific aim was to examine the effectiveness of an avatar interviewer on adults’ accounts of a witnessed event. In this context, adults were interviewed by either a digital-human avatar or a human face-to-face using both free- and directed-recall questions. Some participants also received post-event misinformation that was presented by either the digital-human avatar or the human interviewer. In addition, I examined the impact of several individual differences, including participants’ level of autism and personality traits, and their perception of the avatar’s operation. Finally, I investigated the effectiveness of avatar interviewers with varying degrees of anthropomorphism on adults’ accounts. The second specific aim was to explore the potential for avatar professionals in the context of the disclosure of sensitive information.
In the present thesis, I investigated the effects of two types of avatar interviewers: a more anthropomorphic, 2D cartoon-rendered digital-human avatar, and a less anthropomorphic, speech-wave avatar. The digital-human avatar resembled the appearance of the human interviewers who were also used in the present research, but the avatar’s movement was restricted to eye blinks and head tilts. The speech-wave avatar interviewer resembled Apple’s Siri. Both types of avatar were voiced and operated by a concealed human interviewer. The digital-human avatar’s lips moved in synchrony with the human’s speech; the speech-wave avatar moved up and down, also in synchrony with the human’s speech. The avatar was displayed on a computer monitor that was placed on a table directly in front of the participant. The interviews involving the human interviewer were conducted face-to-face.
Overall, differences in participants’ memory performance was not detected when they were interviewed only once by either a digital-human avatar or a human interviewer. When participants were interviewed twice, on the other hand, participants who were interviewed by the human interviewer were more talkative and provided more correct details than did participants who were interviewed by the digital-human avatar, but their reports were also less accurate during free recall. Still, the digital-human avatar did not protect the participants from the adverse effects of misleading information. Finally, relative to an interview with the digital-human avatar, participants’ memory performance was enhanced when the speech- wave avatar interviewed them. In addition to these group-level results, participants with low conscientiousness and autism traits, or who perceived the digital-human avatar as computer- operated, were more accurate in their accounts during free recall when a digital-human avatar interviewed them.
With respect to disclosure, overall, participants preferred to disclose information to a human professional face-to-face rather than to avatar professionals. When I compared the digital-human avatar to the speech-wave avatar, participants preferred to disclose more embarrassing information, particularly sex-related topics, and reported more coherent details about an embarrassing personal event to a speech-wave avatar. In terms of the avatar’s characteristics, participants indicated that they would be more comfortable disclosing embarrassing information to an avatar appearing as a female around 45- to 54-years of age.
Collectively, my findings provide initial insight of the potential value and pitfalls of using avatars in evidential and clinical interviewing. In this day and age, humans may have adapted to technology, treating non-human interviewers in much the same way as they treat human interviewers. Still, there is a place for avatars in specific populations, and in the context of disclosing stigmatising experiences. The results of the present research have important implications for designing and using avatars that might aid humans in performing specific tasks in help-seeking settings.