Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
phone number to call an auction system, where they would place bids on five items, one
at a time.
Half the participants (randomly assigned) used a system that had a synthetic voice. The other half
of the participants (randomly assigned) used the identical system, but with a recorded voice.
Half of the recorded speech participants and half of the synthetic speech participants were pre-
sented with a system that used the word “I”; the other half of the participants heard only impersonal
speech. Specifically, for people in the “I” condition, there were four uses of “I”/“my” in the intro-
duction and two uses of “I” in each of the five descriptions. To ensure that the sentences were gram-
matical and natural in both conditions, a few additional changes were made to the syntax. Despite
these changes, the sentences—including the amount and type of information given—were essen-
tially the same for all participants.
Here is the introduction and example description for the interface that says “I”:
I
will begin today's auction shortly.
I
have five items for auction today.
I
will read the
descriptions for the items one by one. Please bid at the end of each item's description.
My
records indicate that you have $1000 in your account.
The first item
I
have for you today is a cozy twin-size pine-frame futon. The estimated
retail price is around $180. It's a great piece of furniture for any room and very convenient
when your friends come over. The cover is included. It is one of the top items
I
can offer to
you today.
Here are the parallel sentences for the condition that did not use “I”:
Today's auction will begin shortly. There are five items for auction today. The descriptions
for the items will be read one by one. Please bid at the end of each item's description. The
records indicate that there is $1000 in your account.
The first item today is a cozy twin-size pine-frame futon. The estimated retail price is
around $180. It's a great piece of furniture for any room and very convenient when your
friends come over. The cover is included. It is one of the top items offered today.
There were equal numbers of men and women in each combination of type of voice and use of
“I” or not, to ensure that gender would not affect the results. To control for idiosyncrasies in the
voices, two different recorded voices and two different synthetic voices were used; all voices were
chosen to be similar with respect to gender, age, personality, and accent.
Users showed a strong preference for consistency of humanness. First, when they heard
a recorded voice, participants were more relaxed by the use of “I” (they didn't have to worry about
what was being communicated by the use of the passive voice), while synthetic speech partici-
pants were more relaxed with the interface that did not say “I” (the synthetic voice was not human
enough): It's disturbing when one's language is not consistent with one's ontology.
The “mismatch” between the language of personhood and the voice of a machine, or vice
versa, affected perceptions of the interface as well. Although the interface performed identically
in all conditions, with seemingly 100 percent speech recognition (bids were recorded), the recorded
voice system was perceived to be more useful when using “I,” while the synthetic voice system
seemed more useful when avoiding claims to humanity by avoiding “I.” Similarly, the synthetic
speech system that said “I” was judged less trustworthy than the same system without “I,” demon-
strating that the attempt to claim humanity was perceived as a suspicious artifice; there was no
significant difference for recorded speech.
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