professional education

Simulated counseling practice benefited from structured AI feedback, with the clearest group difference in empathy

Ryan Louie, Raj Sanjay Shah, Ifdita Hasan Orney, Juan Pablo Pacheco, Emma Brunskill, Diyi Yang

CHI 2026

A randomized study of 94 novices compared practice with an AI-simulated counseling client with the same practice plus AI feedback. The clearest between-group result favored feedback on an automated empathy measure; other skills showed more limited or within-group changes. The experiment tested immediate behavior in simulated text conversations, with classifier-based assessment and no conventional-training comparator. It therefore informs training design rather than establishing readiness to counsel real clients.