Combining the Projective Consciousness Model and Virtual Humans to assess ToM capacity in Virtual Reality: a proof-of-concept

TL;DR

This paper presents a novel framework combining the Projective Consciousness Model with virtual humans in virtual reality to simulate and assess Theory of Mind capacities, demonstrating consistent behaviour classification and mutual ToM estimation.

Contribution

It introduces a methodological approach integrating psychological models with virtual agents to simulate and evaluate ToM in VR environments, enabling new assessment possibilities.

Findings

Agents demonstrated expected ToM-based behaviours.

Agents accurately estimated each other's ToM levels.

Framework can be extended to real human interactions in VR.

Abstract

Relating explicit psychological mechanisms and observable behaviours is a central aim of psychological and behavioural science. We implemented the principles of the Projective Consciousness Model into artificial agents embodied as virtual humans, as a proof-of-concept for a methodological framework aimed at simulating behaviours and assessing underlying psychological parameters, in the context of experiments in virtual reality. We focus on simulating the role of Theory of Mind (ToM) in the choice of strategic behaviours of approach and avoidance to optimise the satisfaction of agents' preferences. We designed an experiment in a virtual environment that could be used with real humans, allowing us to classify behaviours as a function of order of ToM, up to the second order. We show that our agents demonstrate expected behaviours with consistent parameters of ToM in this experiment. We also show that the agents can be used to estimate correctly each other order of ToM. A similar approach could be used with real humans in virtual reality experiments not only to enable human participants to interact with parametric, virtual humans as stimuli, but also as a mean of inference to derive model-based psychological assessments of the participants.