A companion agent called Betty Background · The therapeutic purposes of reminiscence. London:...
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Ontology of Reminiscence The CA system consists of data imported from WordNet with a reminiscence ontology. The definition of meaning in WordNet is words that are synonyms in some particular context. Such a collection in WordNet is called a synset. Since words can have multiple meanings (and be multiple parts of speech), the flags of a word are a summary of all of the properties it might have and it has a list of entries called "meanings". Each entry is a meaning and points to the circular list, one of which marks the word you land at as the synset head. This is referred to as the "master" meaning and has the gloss (definition) of the meaning. The meaning list of a master node points back to all the real words which comprise it. Since WordNet has an ontology, its synsets are hooked to other synsets in various relations, particular that of parent and child. The CA represents these as facts. The hierarchical relationship uses the verb "is" and has the child as subject and the parent as object. Future work The CA ‘Betty’ could be contained in a multi-activity environment. Games and other challenges could be provided as well as email and personal photo album access.. A companion agent called Betty Collette Curry 1 , James O’Shea 1 , Keeley Crockett 1 and Laura Brown 2 1 Manchester Metropolitan University & 2 University of Manchester Background In 2008, 1.3 million people in the United Kingdom were aged 85 and over; this number is projected to reach 3.3 million by 2033 [1]. Aging memory impairment problems will become more acute as the population profile changes [1]. Improvement of memory impairment reduces distress and enhances an individual’s wellbeing and independence [2:3]. Quality of life in old age can also be improved by increased subjective well- being, which is concerned with how people experience their lives, and includes both emotional reactions and cognitive judgments [4]. Why Reminiscence? Reminiscence concerns telling stories of the past, personal histories, individual perceptions of social worlds inhabited, and events experienced personally or at a distance [5]. Bender [9] provides a wide range of twenty possible purposes and benefits that can derive from reminiscence. Using a three-Cs model, these include 1) benefits for clients, such as interacting, socializing, learning and engaging in therapeutic activities; 2) benefits for carers to aid communication and improve staff skills; 3) benefits for the work context or culture of the unit [9]. Since publication of the Life Review paper by Butler [5] there has been an exponential growth in literature concerning reminiscence and life review, making the importance of reminiscence and life review in the caring services clear. Betty speaks to the user and responds to enquiries with intelligence. Objectives There are many different algorithms available to produce conversational agents, using a variety of computer languages, databases and flat text files. The study explored these different algorithms and proposed a new method that utilised a database as well as an ontology of reminiscence to provide faster and more realistic conversation in the reminiscence domain. Results The use of standard instruments such as the Everyday Memory Questionnaire (EMQ) [10] both before and after the application of the CA will inform whether there is a noticeable difference in cognitive ability after use of the CA. Standard instruments can be used to screen for cognitive impairment. They can estimate the severity of cognitive impairment at a specific time and to follow the course of cognitive changes in an individual over time, thus making these instruments an effective way to document an individual's response to any intervention. The EMQ is used as a subjective measure of memory failure in everyday life. This more direct assessment of the errors experienced by older adults during their daily activities may be more useful for directing the research into developing an intervention that will have a practical impact. Well- being can be tested with a range of mood assessment techniques including self-reporting measures. These could be collected to show levels of satisfaction with the system. Contact: Collette Curry - [email protected] Manchester Metropolitan University, Room E113, John Dalton Building, Chester Street. Manchester M1 5GD Adaptive narrative The ability to generate narrative is of importance to computer systems that wish to use reminiscence effectively for a wide range of contexts ranging from entertainment to training and education. The typical approach for incorporating narrative into a computer system is for system builders to script the narrative features at design time. This CA uses an ontology to propagate the content and learns from the conversation logs using keywords, concepts and meanings. An ontology of reminiscence was drawn up and used with Betty. Conclusions Using the ‘Betty’ package, older adults took part in reminiscence themed conversations. Conversations were logged and used to create personal dictionaries and themes for further future conversation. The CA was able to acquire new knowledge in this way. Aims To produce an ontology of reminiscence that can be used to inform the knowledge base of a framework conversational agent (CA) companion called ‘Betty’. This will then be used as a reminiscence aid for people with aging memory loss as part of normal aging. Ontology hierarchy References 1 Stockport Metropolitan Borough Council (2010), Dementia: Strategy Document. [Online] [Accessed on 12th January 2012] National Audit Office Source 2 Dorin, M. (2007) ‘Online education of older adults and its relation to life satisfaction’. Educational Gerontology, 33(2), 127-143. 3 Wagner, N., Hassanein, K. and Head, M. (2010) ‘Computer use by older adults. A multi-disciplinary review’. Computers in Human Behaviour, 26, 870-882 4 George, L. K (2010) Still happy after all these years: Research frontiers on subjective well-being in later life. The Journal of Gerontology Series B, Psychological Sciences and Social Sciences. 65B(3):331-9. doi: 10.1093/ geronb/gbq006. 5 Butler, R.N.(1963) The Life Review: An interpretation of reminiscence in the aged. Psychiatry, 26: 65-76. 6 Trueman, I. and Parker, J. (2004) Life review in palliative care. European journal of palliative care, 11(6): 249-53. 7 Parker, J. (2003) Positive communication with people who have dementia. In: Adams, T. and Manthorpe, J. (eds.). Dementia Care. London: Arnold, pp.148-63. 8 WordNet: An electronic lexical database available from Princeton University [online] http:// wordnet.princeton.edu/wordnet/ [Accessed 20th December 2012] 9 Bender, M., Bauckham, P. & Norris, A., 1999. The therapeutic purposes of reminiscence. London: Sage. 10 Sunderland, A., Harris, J.E., & Baddeley, A, (1983) The Everyday Memory Questionnaire The CA has a standard response mechanism to deal with off-topic user utterances. This is known as the ELIZA layer. The CA began life as a text block which displayed the CA response as well as the user’s input. The CA remembered past visits and conversations Improvement of mood can result from speaking with the CA The CA evolved into a speaking avatar, displaying the user utterance and CA response as text on the screen. This helped with reinforcement of the conversation. System architecture
Transcript of A companion agent called Betty Background · The therapeutic purposes of reminiscence. London:...
Ontology of Reminiscence The CA system consists of data imported from WordNet with a reminiscence ontology. The definition of meaning in WordNet is words that are synonyms in some particular context. Such a collection in WordNet is called a synset. Since words can have multiple meanings (and be multiple parts of speech), the flags of a word are a summary of all of the properties it might have and it has a list of entries called "meanings". Each entry is a meaning and points to the circular list, one of which marks the word you land at as the synset head. This is referred to as the "master" meaning and has the gloss (definition) of the meaning. The meaning list of a master node points back to all the real words which comprise it. Since WordNet has an ontology, its synsets are hooked to other synsets in various relations, particular that of parent and child. The CA represents these as facts. The hierarchical relationship uses the verb "is" and has the child as subject and the parent as object. Future work
The CA ‘Betty’ could be contained in a multi-activity environment. Games and other challenges could be provided as well as email and personal photo album access..
A companion agent called Betty
Collette Curry1, James O’Shea1, Keeley Crockett1 and Laura Brown2
1Manchester Metropolitan University & 2University of Manchester
Background In 2008, 1.3 million people in the United Kingdom were aged 85 and over; this number is projected to reach 3.3 million by 2033 [1]. Aging memory impairment problems will become more acute as the popu la t i on p ro f i l e changes [ 1 ] . Improvement of memory impairment reduces distress and enhances an individual’s wellbeing and independence [2:3]. Quality of life in old age can also be improved by increased subjective well-being, which is concerned with how people experience their lives, and includes both emotional reactions and cognitive judgments [4].
Why Reminiscence? Reminiscence concerns telling stories of the past, personal histories, individual perceptions of social worlds inhabited, and events experienced personally or at a distance [5]. Bender [9] provides a wide range of twenty possible purposes and benefits that can derive from reminiscence. Using a three-Cs model, these include 1) benefits for clients, such as interacting, socializing, learning and engaging in therapeutic
activities; 2) benefits for carers to aid communication and improve staff skills; 3) benefits for the work context or culture of the unit [9]. Since publication of the Life Review paper by Butler [5] there has been an exponential growth in literature concerning reminiscence and life review, making the importance of reminiscence and life review in the caring services clear.
Betty speaks to the user and responds to enquiries with intelligence.
Objectives There are many different algorithms available to produce conversational agents, using a variety of computer languages, databases and flat text files. The study explored these different algorithms and proposed a new method that utilised a database as well as an ontology of reminiscence to provide faster and more realistic conversation in the reminiscence domain.
Results The use of standard instruments such as the Everyday Memory Questionnaire (EMQ) [10] both before and after the application of the CA will inform whether there is a noticeable difference in cognitive ability after use of the CA. Standard instruments can be used to screen for cognitive impairment. They can estimate the severity of cognitive impairment at a specific time and to follow the course of cognitive changes in an individual over time, thus making these instruments an effective way to document an individual's response to any intervention. The EMQ is used as a subjective measure of memory failure in everyday life. This more direct assessment of the errors experienced by older adults during their daily activities may be more useful for directing the research into developing an intervention that will have a practical impact. Well-being can be tested with a range of mood assessment techniques including self-reporting measures. These could be collected to show levels of satisfaction with the system.
Contact: Collette Curry - [email protected] Manchester Metropolitan University, Room E113, John Dalton Building, Chester Street. Manchester M1 5GD
Adaptive narrative
The ability to generate narrative is of importance to computer systems
that wish to use reminiscence effectively for a wide range of
contexts ranging from entertainment to training and education. The
typical approach for incorporating narrative into a computer system is
for system builders to script the narrative features at design time.
This CA uses an ontology to propagate the content and learns from the conversation logs using
keywords, concepts and meanings.
An ontology of reminiscence was
drawn up and used with Betty.
Conclusions Using the ‘Betty’ package, older adults took part in reminiscence themed conversations. Conversations were logged and used to create personal dictionaries and themes for further future conversation. The CA was able to acquire new knowledge in this way.
Aims To produce an ontology of reminiscence that can be used to inform the knowledge base of a framework conversational agent (CA) companion called ‘Betty’. This will then be used as a reminiscence aid for people with aging memory loss as part of normal aging.
Ontology hierarchy
References 1 Stockport Metropolitan Borough Council (2010), Dementia: Strategy Document. [Online] [Accessed on 12th January 2012] National Audit Office Source 2 Dorin, M. (2007) ‘Online education of older adults and its relation to life satisfaction’. Educational Gerontology, 33(2), 127-143. 3 Wagner, N., Hassanein, K. and Head, M. (2010) ‘Computer use by older adults. A multi-disciplinary review’.
Computers in Human Behaviour, 26, 870-882 4 George, L. K (2010) Still happy after all these years: Research frontiers on subjective well-being in later life. The
Journal of Gerontology Series B, Psychological Sciences and Social Sciences. 65B(3):331-9. doi: 10.1093/geronb/gbq006.
5 Butler, R.N.(1963) The Life Review: An interpretation of reminiscence in the aged. Psychiatry, 26: 65-76. 6 Trueman, I. and Parker, J. (2004) Life review in palliative care. European journal of palliative care, 11(6):
249-53. 7 Parker, J. (2003) Positive communication with people who have dementia. In: Adams, T. and Manthorpe, J.
(eds.). Dementia Care. London: Arnold, pp.148-63. 8 WordNet: An electronic lexical database available from Princeton University [online] http://
wordnet.princeton.edu/wordnet/ [Accessed 20th December 2012] 9 Bender, M., Bauckham, P. & Norris, A., 1999. The therapeutic purposes of reminiscence. London: Sage. 10 Sunderland, A., Harris, J.E., & Baddeley, A, (1983) The Everyday Memory Questionnaire
The CA has a standard response mechanism to deal with off-topic user utterances. This is known as the ELIZA layer.
The CA began life as a text block which displayed the CA response as well as the user’s input. The CA remembered past visits and conversations
Improvement of mood can result from
speaking with the CA
The CA evolved into a speaking avatar, displaying the user utterance and CA response as text on the screen. This helped with reinforcement of the conversation.
System architecture
