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

ABSTRACT: 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 perf

SUBMITTER: de Melo CM 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC7705099 | biostudies-literature | 2020

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature