An Affective Agent Playing Tic-Tac-Toe as Part of a Healing Environment

There is a growing belief that the environment plays an important role in the healing process of patients, supported by empirical findings. Previous research showed that psychological stress caused by loneliness can be reduced by artificial companions. As a pilot application for this purpose, this paper presents an affective agent playing tic-tac-toe with the user. Experimenting with a number of agents under different parameter settings shows the agent is able to show human-like emotional behavior, and can make decisions based on rationality as well as on affective influences. After discussing the application with clinical experts and making improvements where needed, the application can be tested in a clinical setting in future research.