Originally aired Friday, May 1, 2015

Albert “Skip” Rizzo is a pioneer in virtual technology. His newest program is the the Virtual Interactive Training Agent, or VITA.

It was developed by the USC Institute for Creative Technologies, in partnership with the Dan Marino Foundation. The interactive aims to help people navigate a job interview. For people on the autism spectrum, Rizzo says, job interviews can be particularly daunting.

VITA helps people practice questions with a virtual interviewer.

“We can set them to have three different behavioral dispositions. They can be that really nice, light-touch job interviewer, the neutral interviewer or the real stress interviewer — the real son-of-a-B,” Rizzo says. “We can have people practice how they will respond to these types of characters under a range of conditions.”

Aaron Brown-Coats went through the VITA program as part of the curriculum at the Dan Marino Foundation, and says working with the virtual characters helped change the way he interacts at his own job.