• Medical practitioners taking patient histories or interacting with children;
• Law officers handling crisis situations involving mental illness, trauma, or violence; and
• Military officers interviewing refugees or settling stressed civilians.

This effort is addressing multiple research issues relevant for RVHT to reach the sophistication required for robust interaction skills training. Important questions being answered include:

• How is behavior modeled under normal conditions (i.e., a calm adult) and derivative conditions (e.g., anger, schizophrenia, pain, childhood)?
• What expressions, gestures, movement, and other behaviors will users interpret as serene, angry, schizophrenic, pained, or childlike?
• What skills can be acquired, practiced, and validated using RVHT? What is involved in providing a convincing simulation of human interaction where acquired skills transfer to a live environment?

The research results are exposing a range of additional training and educational opportunities, such as interviewing risky behavior and presenting rare, traumatic events. Combinations of RVHT-based training and instructor-led training offer significantly reduced training development and delivery costs, and increased student throughput, while maintaining training effectiveness and consistency.