But that was in another country: agents and intercultural empathy

Abstract

This paper discusses the development of a believable agent-based educational application designed to develop inter-cultural empathy for 13-14 year old students. It considers relevant work in cultural taxonomy and adaptation to other cultures as well as work showing that users are sensitive to the perceived culture of believable interactive characters. It discusses how an existing affective agent architecture was developed to model culturally- specific agent behaviour. Finally, it considers the role of interaction modalities in supporting an empathic engagement with culturally-specific characters.