Talking to Digital Fish

Abstract

Conversational interfaces that incorporate animated characters potentially are well suited for educational software, since they can engage children as active learners and support question asking skills. In the present research, a simulation study was conducted in which twenty-four 7-to-10-year-old children used speech and pen input to converse directly with animated fish as they learned about marine biology. The animated fish responded with TTS voices crafted to sound either extroverted or introverted in accordance with the speech signal literature. During these interactions, children became highly engaged, asking an average of 152 questions during a 45-minute session. Self-report measures further confirmed that children liked “talking to the animals and that the TTS and interface were easy to understand and use. The auditory embodiment of animated characters as TTS output also had a significant selective impact on children’s engagement in asking science questions. Specifically, children asked +16% more science questions when conversing with animated characters embodying an extrovert TTS voice that resembled the speech of a master teacher (e.g., higher volume and pitch, wider pitch range), rather than an introvert TTS voice, although no differential impact was found on social questions. These findings reveal that conversational interfaces can be designed that effectively stimulate children during learning activities, thereby supporting the goals of next-generation educational software.