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Pedagogical Soap 147trol their children” and “treat them with respect.” So discussing her daughter’stantrums can lead to sadness out of concern for Diana and anxiety/guilt becausefailure to control Diana may reflect on her ability as a mother. Moregenerally, because of her depression, the Carmen agent may initially requireprompting. But as she is reassured, or the various subproblems in the strategyare addressed, she will begin to feel hopeful that the problem solving will workand may engage the problem solving without explicit prompting.The learner is also part of this interaction. She impacts Carmen by choosingamong possible thoughts and feelings that Carmen might have in the currentsituation, which are then incorporated into Carmen’s mental model, causingCarmen to act accordingly. This design allows the learner to adopt differentrelationships to Carmen and the story. The learner may have Carmen feel asshe would, act they way she would or “act out” in ways she would not in frontof her real-world counselor.The combination of Gina’s motivation through dialog and the learner’s impacton Carmen has an interesting impact on the drama. While Gina is usingdialog to motivate Carmen, the learner’s interaction is also influencing Carmen’sthoughts and emotions. This creates a tension in the drama, a tug-ofwarbetween Gina’s attempts to motivate Carmen and the initial, possibly lesspositive, attitudes of the Carmen/learner pair. As the learner plays a role indetermining Carmen’s attitudes, she assumes a relationship in this tug-of-war,including, ideally, an empathy for Carmen and her difficulties, a responsibilityfor the onscreen action and perhaps empathy for Gina. If Gina gets Carmen toactively engage in applying the IDEAS technique with a positive attitude, thenshe potentially wins over the learner, giving her a positive attitude. Regardless,the learner gets a vivid demonstration of how to apply the technique.4. Concluding CommentsThe social interactions in Carmen’s Bright IDEAS are played out in front ofa demanding audience - mothers undergoing problems similar to Carmen. Thischallenges the agents to socially interact with a depth and subtlety consistentwith human behavior in difficult, stressful situations. Currently, the Carmen’sBright IDEAS prototype is in clinical trials, where it is facing its demandingaudience. The anecdotal feedback is extremely positively. Soon, a carefulevaluation of how well the challenge has been addressed will be forthcoming.AcknowledgmentsThe work discussed here was done with W. Lewis Johnson and Catherine LaBore. Theauthor also wishes to thank our clinical psychologist collaborators, particularly O.J. Sahler,MD, Ernest Katz, Ph.D., James Varni, Ph.D., and Karin Hart, Psy.D. Discussions with Jeff