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The Effect of Personal Pronouns on Users’ Emotional Experience in Voice Interaction

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Human-Computer Interaction. Multimodal and Natural Interaction (HCII 2020)

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Abstract

There is a growing tendency that users expect voice assistants can recognize and follow some principles in interpersonal communication to enhance emotional experience. Therefore, we study how personal pronouns should be used in the response of voice assistants for Chinese users. We conducted a quantitative experiment. The independent variable is the use of personal pronouns in the intelligent voice assistants, including three levels: no personal pronouns, singular first-person pronouns and singular second person pronouns. 24 participants listened to dialogues between users and the voice assistant and evaluated the perception of emotional experience. It is found in the results that the use of personal pronouns by voice assistants can affect users’ emotional experience. Compared with non-use of personal pronouns and use of first-person pronouns, users would have more trust in the voice assistants when it responded in the second person pronouns, and users were more satisfied with the response of the voice assistants in the second person pronouns. These results can inform the design of voice interaction and it is possible to design response strategies for machines based on the theory of interpersonal communication and pragmatics.

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Correspondence to Ronggang Zhou .

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Qu, J., Zhou, R., Zou, L., Sun, Y., Zhao, M. (2020). The Effect of Personal Pronouns on Users’ Emotional Experience in Voice Interaction. In: Kurosu, M. (eds) Human-Computer Interaction. Multimodal and Natural Interaction. HCII 2020. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 12182. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-49062-1_16

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-49062-1_16

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-030-49061-4

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-030-49062-1

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