Batyrkhan Omarov^1,*, Sergazi Narynov², Zhandos Zhumanov²

CMC-Computers, Materials & Continua, Vol.74, No.3, pp. 5105-5122, 2023, DOI:10.32604/cmc.2023.034655

Abstract Clinical applications of Artificial Intelligence (AI) for mental health care have experienced a meteoric rise in the past few years. AI-enabled chatbot software and applications have been administering significant medical treatments that were previously only available from experienced and competent healthcare professionals. Such initiatives, which range from “virtual psychiatrists” to “social robots” in mental health, strive to improve nursing performance and cost management, as well as meeting the mental health needs of vulnerable and underserved populations. Nevertheless, there is still a substantial gap between recent progress in AI mental health and the widespread use of these solutions by healthcare practitioners… More >

Sung Park^1,*, Seongeon Park², Mincheol Whang²

CMC-Computers, Materials & Continua, Vol.71, No.2, pp. 3761-3784, 2022, DOI:10.32604/cmc.2022.023738

Abstract Artificial entities, such as virtual agents, have become more pervasive. Their long-term presence among humans requires the virtual agent's ability to express appropriate emotions to elicit the necessary empathy from the users. Affective empathy involves behavioral mimicry, a synchronized co-movement between dyadic pairs. However, the characteristics of such synchrony between humans and virtual agents remain unclear in empathic interactions. Our study evaluates the participant's behavioral synchronization when a virtual agent exhibits an emotional expression congruent with the emotional context through facial expressions, behavioral gestures, and voice. Participants viewed an emotion-eliciting video stimulus (negative or positive) with a virtual agent. The… More >