Reducing Cognitive Load and Improving Warfighter Problem Solving With Intelligent Virtual Assistants

Frontiers in Psychology

article

Celso M. de Melo¹  Kangsoo Kim²  Nahal Norouzi⁴  Gerd Bruder³  Gregory Welch² 

[1] Computational and Information Sciences, CCDC US Army Research Laboratory, United States;College of Nursing, University of Central Florida, United States;Institute for Simulation and Training, University of Central Florida, United States;Department of Computer Science, University of Central Florida, United States

关键词: intelligent virtual assistant;    collaboration;    cognitive load;    embodiment;    augmented reality;   

DOI  :  10.3389/fpsyg.2020.554706

学科分类：社会科学、人文和艺术（综合）

来源: Frontiers

【 摘 要 】

Recent times have seen increasing interest in conversational assistants (e.g., Amazon Alexa) designed to help users in their daily tasks. In military settings, it is critical to design assistants that are, simultaneously, helpful and able to minimize the user’s cognitive load. Here, we show that embodiment plays a key role in achieving that goal. We present an experiment where participants engaged in an augmented reality version of the relatively well-known desert survival task. Participants were paired with a voice assistant, an embodied assistant, or no assistant. The assistants made suggestions verbally throughout the task, whereas the embodied assistant further used gestures and emotion to communicate with the user. Our results indicate that both assistant conditions led to higher performance over the no assistant condition, but the embodied assistant achieved this with less cognitive burden on the decision maker than the voice assistant, which is a novel contribution. We discuss implications for the design of intelligent collaborative systems for the warfighter.

【 授权许可】

CC BY