But that was in another country: agents and intercultural empathy

This paper discusses the development of a believable agent-based educational application designed to develop inter-cultural empathy for 13-14 year old students. It considers relevant work in cultural taxonomy and adaptation to other cultures as well as work showing that users are sensitive to the perceived culture of believable interactive characters. It discusses how an existing affective agent architecture was developed to model culturallyspecific agent behaviour. Finally, it considers the role of interaction modalities in supporting an empathic engagement with culturally-specific characters. Categories and Subject Descriptors General Terms Design Keywords Artificial Intelligence, Applications, Virtual Agents (Models of personality, emotions and social behavior)

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2009
• Where: ATAL
• Authors: Ruth Aylett, Natalie Vannini, Elisabeth André, Ana Paiva, Sibylle Enz, Lynne E. Hall
• Keywords: Affective Agent Architecture, Agent-based Educational Application, Artificial Intelligence, ATAL 2009, Believable Interactive Characters