Lilobot: A Cognitive Conversational Agent to Train Counsellors at Children's Helplines : Design and Initial Evaluation

Sharon Grundmann, Mohammed Al Owayyed*, Merijn Bruijnes, Ellen Vroonhof, Willem Paul Brinkman

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalArticleAcademicpeer-review

Abstract

To equip new counsellors at a Dutch child helpline with the needed counselling skills, the helpline uses role-playing, a form of learning through simulation in which one counsellor-in-training portrays a child seeking help and the other portrays a counsellor. However, this process is time-intensive and logistically challenging-issues that a conversational agent could help address. In this paper, we propose an initial design for a computer agent that acts as a child help-seeker to be used in a role-play setting. Our agent, Lilobot, is based on a Belief-Desire-Intention (BDI) model to simulate the reasoning process of a child who is being bullied at school. Through interaction with Lilobot, counsellors-in-training can practise the Five Phase Model, a conversation strategy that underpins the helpline's counselling principle of keeping conversations child-centred. We compared a training session with Lilobot to a text-based training, inviting experienced counsellors from the Dutch child helpline to participate in both sessions. We conducted pre- and post-measurement comparisons for both training sessions. Contrary to our expectations, the results show a decrease in counselling self-efficacy at post-measurement, particularly in Lilobot's condition. Still, the counsellors' qualitative feedback indicated that, with further development and refinements, they believed Lilobot could potentially serve as a useful supplementary tool for training new helpline counsellors. Our work also highlights three future research directions for training simulators in this domain: integrating emotions into the model, providing guided feedback to the counsellor, and incorporating Large Language Models (LLMs) into the conversations.

Original languageEnglish
Article number5
Number of pages11
JournalJournal of Medical Systems
Volume49
Issue number1
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 14 Jan 2025

Bibliographical note

Publisher Copyright:
© 2025. The Author(s).

Keywords

  • BDI
  • Chatbot
  • Child counselling
  • Conversational agent
  • Education
  • Training

Fingerprint

Dive into the research topics of 'Lilobot: A Cognitive Conversational Agent to Train Counsellors at Children's Helplines : Design and Initial Evaluation'. Together they form a unique fingerprint.

Cite this