The National Institute of Mental Health has awarded communication professor Lynn Miller and her interdisciplinary research team a $3.475 million grant to develop a video game designed to reduce risky sexual behavior that can lead to acquiring HIV.
SOLVE-IT, a video game using computer-generated virtual people, is the next generation of interactive media aimed at reducing risky sex among young men who have sex with men (MSM). Participants will interact in a virtual environment that focuses upon HIV prevention in a dating context. Men will interact on an online date with realistic "intelligent agents" designed to model the beliefs, goals and policies of real people that drive their behavior.
Participants will go through a series of life-like interactions with these realistic agents and make many choices about how the date will proceed. When men make a risky choice, guides "pop up" and provide a message that — among other things — warns them about the consequences of the choice, which Miller said is likely to lead to a lesser likelihood of taking the same risk in real life.
The grant, worth $3.475 million over five years, will support an expansion of Miller's previous research that used interactive video instead of intelligent agent/gaming technology.
"People often engage in risky choices in the 'heat of the moment' that they later regret," said Miller, adding that researchers have not fully taken advantage of new technologies to engage young people in order to change their risky behaviors. "The more the environment is similar to real life, the more likely players in the virtual environment are to change their behavior in a real-world environment. We're trying to determine if we can use new technology to change people's virtual risky choices and if doing so changes their subsequent real-life behavior. If it did, men wouldn't have to face real-life physical consequences in order to change their risky choices."
Preliminary design of the game will take 2-2.5 years. The next step is recruiting men to play the game followed by studying the results. Based on her past experience with this type of game, Miller said SOLVE-IT will guide the user to make healthier automatic choices when in similar environments such as bars, clubs and domestic settings.
"Lynn Miller and her colleagues have pioneered in the application of sophisticated communication technologies to important problems in the prevention of sexually transmitted diseases," School of Communication director Larry Gross said. "Her research on the use of virtual environments for motivating healthy decision making by sexually active men demonstrates the power of communication theory to address important societal problems."
Said Miller: "Another advantage of this game is that these same environments and intelligent agents with realistic bodies that we're creating can be used for other risk interventions involving drugs or smoking. A lot of other risk choices take place in similar contexts."
Other principal investigators at USC include: Robert Appleby (Psychology); Stephen Read (Psychology); Stacy Marsella (Information Sciences Institute); and Leslie Clark(Dept. of Pediatrics).
