虛擬人物的快速發展已經讓人機互動方式，以及人們對於電腦的看法產生重大影響。昔日人機介面只能以文字對話，如今虛擬人物能以栩栩如生之姿來與使用者進行面對面的情緒互動，並協助人們完成各式各樣的任務。 在教育與醫療方面，關懷扮演著極重要的角色，它能提供溫暖與協助人們處理情緒方面的問題。因此在本論文中，我們試圖透過臉部表情、手勢、身體動作以及社交對話，結合同理心與主動傾聽的運用，設計出一個具有關懷能力的虛擬人物Maggie，來與學習者在電腦學習環境中進行情緒互動。在學習系統中，關懷人物能夠傾聽學習者的社會與情感需求，並站在對方的角度去思考，提供同理式回應來改善學習者在遇到困難時所產生的負面情緒(例如:挫折)，最後給予支持鼓勵，幫助其恢復學習信心。 本系統實驗對象為15位大一學生(12位男生，3位女生)，學生在學習系統中分別與三種代理人(具關懷能力虛擬人物、不具關懷能力虛擬人物，以及僅用文字對話關懷的代理人)進行互動。初步的結果顯示，有關懷能力虛擬人物不僅讓學習者感受到更多關懷，對於學習方面也產生一些正面影響，例如具關懷能力虛擬人物促進了學習者教材複習意願、繼續測驗意願，以及測驗答題數目。學生也認為有關懷能力的虛擬人物運用社交化行為(例如：寒暄、閒聊近況)，配合情意動作的表現，不但有助於引發他們的學習興趣，還能提升學生使用學習系統的意願。 The rapid development of virtual characters has enormous influence on human-computer interaction and the perception of people. In the past, computers just only use text-based interface to communicate with users, but today life-like virtual characters can provide face-to-face emotional interaction to assist people in completing all kinds of tasks. On the other hand, caring plays a very crucial role in education and medical professions to help people deal with emotional problems. Therefore, in this paper, we present an interactive caring virtual character who uses facial expressions, hand gestures, body movements, and social dialogue to show empathy and active listening for interacting with learners and making them feel cared in a learning system. The caring virtual character would listen to learners’ social and affective needs, provide empathic feedback to recover from their negative emotions (such as frustration), and encourage learners to overcome academic problems. The caring virtual character's effectiveness was evaluated against two control conditions (virtual character without caring ability and text-based caring agent). The preliminary results show that, in comparison with the two controls, the virtual character with caring ability may not only make the subjects feel more cared and increase the interaction between the subjects and the learning system, but also has positive effects to a certain degree on the subjects' learning, promoting their interest in course material, and making them more engaged in learning.
