Uncanny Speech - Game Sound Technology and Player Interaction: Concepts and Developments - page 215

help to define acceptable levels of asynchrony for
computer games where uncanniness is not desired.
For figures onscreen an over exaggeration
of pronunciation for particular words can make
the figure appear uncanny to the viewer as the
figure seems absurd or comical (Spadoni, 2000).
The fifth section considers how the manner of
articulation of speech may influence the uncanny
by examining the visual representation (viseme)
for each phoneme within the choreography tool
Faceposer (Valve Corporation, 2008).
A summary is presented in the final section
that defines the outcomes from this inquiry as to
how speech influences the uncanny for realistic,
human-like virtual characters as a way towards
building a conceptual framework for the uncanny.
It is intended that this framework is not only rel-
evant to computer game characters but also for
characters within a wider context of user inter-
faces. For example virtual conversational agents
within therapeutic applications used to interact
with autistic children to aid the development of
communication skills. Also those virtual conver-
sational agents used to deliver learning material
to students within e-learning applications.

being at first an assurance against death, then the
more sinister reminder of death's omen “a ghastly
harbinger of death” (p. 235).
Building on previous depictions of the uncanny,
the roboticist Masahiro Mori (1970, as translated
by MacDorman & Minato, 2005) observed that a
robot continued to be perceived as more familiar
and pleasing to a viewer as the robot's appear-
ance became more human-like. However, a more
negative response was evoked from the robot as
the degree of human-likeness reached a stage at
which the robot was close to being human, but not
fully. Mori plotted a perpendicular slope climbing
as the variables for perceived human-likeness and
familiarity increased until a point was reached
where the robot was regarded as more strange
than familiar (see Figure 1). At this point (about
80-85% human-likeness), due to subtle deviations
from the human-norm and the resounding negative
associations with the robot, Mori drew a valley
shaped dip. A real human was placed, escaping
the valley, on the other side. Mori gave examples
of objects such as zombies, corpses and lifelike
prosthetic hands that lie within the valley. He
also predicted that the Uncanny Valley would be
amplified with movement as opposed to the still
images of a robot.
Mori recommended that for robot designers,
it was best to avoid designing complete androids
and to instead develop humanoid robots with
human-like traits, aiming for the first valley peak
and not the second which would risk a fall into
the Uncanny Valley. As computer game designers
working in particular genres continue the pursuit
of realism as a way to improve player experience
and immersion, designers have the second peak
as a goal to achieve believably realistic, human-
like characters (Ashcraft, 2008; Plantec, 2008).
To reach this goal and to assess if overcoming the
Uncanny Valley is an achievable feat, further
investigation and analysis of the factors that may
exaggerate the uncanny is required.

tHE UNcANNY VALLEY

The subject of the uncanny was first introduced
in contemporary thought by Jentsch (1906) in an
essay entitled On the Psychology of the Uncanny .
Jentsch described the uncanny as a mental state
where one cannot distinguish between what is real
or unreal and which objects are alive or dead. In
1919, to establish what caused certain objects to
be construed as frightening or uncanny, Sigmund
Freud made reference to Jentch's essay as a way
to describe the feeling caused when one cannot
detect if an object is animate or inanimate upon
encountering objects such as “waxwork figures,
ingeniously constructed dolls and automata” (p.
226). Freud characterized the uncanny as similar
to the notion of a doppelganger; the body replica