Psico Bot: a robot for psychological assessment of children and adolescents

Abstract

Chatbots can use fast, and sometimes specialized interactions in different situations, making them an option in the choice of tools to collect information. In the psychological assessment of children and adolescents, they can act as complementary sources, and help to describe, qualify and measure psychological and behavioral characteristics, in its various forms of expression, in different contexts. This study aimed to present Psico Bot, a chatbot developed to assess symptoms of anxiety and depression in children and adolescents. Consisting of 20 questions that map physical and psychological symptoms of the selected constructs, it was developed through the natural language Dialogflow for use in the Google Assistant conversation platform. The design of Psico Bot is based on a neutral representation, with no determined gender or age, facilitating quick identification by the user. Based on the use of multimethod evaluations, the Psico Bot can offer relevant information about the mental health of children and adolescents using language and devices that are easy to understand and handle by this population. For the evaluator, the tool offers quick response and specific information about each construct, enabling more effective interventions in elements of greatest need.