5 . Computational model of influences on physical activity

A computational agent model of social and cognitive influences on physical activity based on Bandura’s social cognitive theory is proposed. The utility of this model is twofold. First, it is used to run simulations of many different scenarios, that cannot be manipulated easily in reality, and that can possibly lead to new hypotheses about how social and cognitive factors influence physical activity. Second, as a next step, this computational model will be deployed in a real world coaching agent. The coach will use the current model to reason about the social and cognitive influences on the user’s physical activity and derive which coaching strategy fits the user best.