Predicting and Regulating Participation Equality in Human-robot Conversations: Effects of Age and Gender
2017 (English)In: Proceedings of the 2017 ACM/IEEE International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction, IEEE Computer Society, 2017, p. 196-204Conference paper, Published paper (Refereed)
Abstract [en]
In this paper, we investigate participation equality, in terms of speaking time, between users in multi-party human-robot conversations. We analyse a dataset where pairs of users (540 in total) interact with a conversational robot exhibited at a technical museum. The data encompass a wide range of different users in terms of age (adults/children) and gender (male/female), in different combinations. Overall, the analysis indicates that demographically heterogeneous pairs are more imbalanced, especially pairs of adults and children, where children are less prone to self-select in the turn-taking. The analysis also indicates that it is possible for the robot to reduce the imbalance by addressing the least dominant user and asking directed questions. However, for children to respond, it is important to seek mutual gaze and switch addressee often. Finally, we show that it is possible to predict the imbalance at an early stage in the interaction - in order to increase the participation equality as early as possible - and that knowledge about the users' age and gender helps in this prediction.
Place, publisher, year, edition, pages
IEEE Computer Society, 2017. p. 196-204
Series
ACM/IEEE International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction, ISSN 2167-2148
Keywords [en]
age, children, gender, human-robot interaction, multi-party interactions, participation equality, speech, turn-taking
National Category
Human Computer Interaction
Identifiers
URN: urn:nbn:se:kth:diva-212038DOI: 10.1145/2909824.3020210ISI: 000463724200022Scopus ID: 2-s2.0-85021830894OAI: oai:DiVA.org:kth-212038DiVA, id: diva2:1133352
Conference
12th Annual ACM/IEEE International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction, HRI 2017, Vienna, Austria, 6 March 2017 through 9 March 2017
Note
QC 20241106
Part of ISBN 978-145034336-7
2017-08-152017-08-152024-11-06Bibliographically approved