LEARNING BY FEELING: EVOKING EMPATHY WITH SYNTHETIC CHARACTERS

摘要

Virtual environments (VEs) are now becoming a promising new technology to be used in the development of interactive learning environments for children. Perhaps triggered by the success of computer games, VEs are seen as an emergent and engaging new way by which children can learn experimental sciences and other disciplines. Inhabiting these IVEs can be agents or intelligent characters that are responsible, far events that happen in the environment and make it not predictive or completely controlled. However, to build such environments, in particular, if populated by synthetic characters, one needs to carefully address the problem of how do the learners respond to the characters in the virtual environment. Do learners like the characters? Do learners identify themselves with characters in virtual environments? This relation between learners and characters in virtual environments can be studied in several perspectives. In this paper, we will focus primarily on the issue of empathy as one desirable aspect of the affective interaction between learners and synthetic characters. In particular, we will defend that in order for such affective relations to happen, characters should be created and designed taking into account what we call the proximity factor. This is based on the fact that children are found to respond more empathically to those that are perceived as similar to the self than those who are perceived as dissimilar (Barnett 1987). This appears to be the case when similarity is defined in terms of a shared characteristic, such as sex (Bryant 1982), race or in terms of shared personal experiences (Bryant 1982). Thus, designing characters aiming at pedagogical empathic interactions, we should carefully address how close the learner will feel with the synthetic characters developed in terms of situation, behavior or even physical appearance.