| Sumario: | Purpose A virtual agent system was developed to serve as a conversation partner for individuals with dementia1,2. The computer screens showed an animated face resembling 'a five-year-old grandchild' (Figure 2). The agent could ask any of 120 reminiscent pre-set questions1,2,3, automatically detect the end of an individual's reply, and follow with a new question4. Methods Experiment 1 included eight individuals with Alzheimer's disease. Their average age was 78.5 years, and the mean Mini-Mental State Examination (MMSE) score was 22.2. A subset of 15 questions was selected. For the same 15 questions, each participant replied to the agent (agent condition 1) and to a human partner (58 year old, human condition 1). In Experiment 2, we observed a multi-party conversation between the agent and two participants with dementia or mild cognitive impairment. Their average age was 75.9 years and the mean MMSE score was 24. Five participant pairs conversed with this agent (agent condition 2), or without the agent (human condition 2). We evaluated the influence of the agent on their conversation using original psychological five-scale ratings. Results & Discussion For Experiment 1, we calculated the number of syllables included in each participant's reply for the two conditions. All the participants uttered 5,494 (74%) syllables in the agent condition 1 compared with 7,406 (100%) syllables in the human condition 1 (Figure 3). For Experiment 2, two participants conversed well with this agent. On the other hand, the agent adversely affected on the conversation of one pair. We discussed the effectiveness of this virtual agent system for the participants and multi-party conversations.
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