Does Talking to a Robot in a High-Pitched Voice Create a Good Impression of the Robot?

Author

Ryoko, Shibata ; Chie, Fukada ; Takatsugu, Kojima ; Kaori, Sato ; Yuki, Hashikura ; Motoyuki, Ozeki ; Natsuki, Oka

Author_Institution

Dept. of Inf. Sci., Kyoto Inst. of Technol., Kyoto, Japan

fYear

2012

fDate

8-10 Aug. 2012

Firstpage

19

Lastpage

24

Abstract

When talking to infants, we tend to use infant-directed speech (IDS) rather than adult-directed speech (ADS). IDS attracts more attention from infants, conveys the emotions of adults more easily, and makes language acquisition easier. It is not clear, however, whether IDS has a cognitive effect on adults as well. To address this issue, we focus on one of the most distinctive features of IDS, a high-pitched voice. In addition, we conduct two human-robot interaction experiments to examine the following two hypotheses: (i) a robot reacting selectively to a high-pitched voice triggers a high-pitched voice of the user (H1), and (ii) talking to a robot in a high-pitched voice improves the user´s impression of the robot (H2). The results did not support H1, but marginally supported H2.

Keywords

human-robot interaction; speech-based user interfaces; IDS; high-pitched voice; human-robot interaction experiments; infant-directed speech; language acquisition; robot; Correlation; Educational robots; Noise; Robot motion; Semantics; Speech; attachment; high-pitched voice; human-robot interaction; infant-directed speech; semantic differential;

fLanguage

English

Publisher

ieee

Conference_Titel

Software Engineering, Artificial Intelligence, Networking and Parallel & Distributed Computing (SNPD), 2012 13th ACIS International Conference on

Conference_Location

Kyoto

Print_ISBN

978-1-4673-2120-4

Type

conf

DOI

10.1109/SNPD.2012.72

Filename

6299253