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Speech and Gesture Emphasis Effects for Robotic and Human Communicators: A Direct Comparison

Bremner, Paul; Leonards, Ute

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Authors

Paul Bremner Paul2.Bremner@uwe.ac.uk
Associate Professor in Human Robotics Interactions

Ute Leonards



Abstract

© 2015 ACM. Emphasis, by means of either pitch accents or beat gestures (rhythmic co-verbal gestures with no semantic meaning), has been shown to serve two main purposes in human communication: syntactic disambiguation and salience. To use beat gestures in this role, interlocutors must be able to integrate them with the speech they accompany. Whether such integration is possible when the multi-modal communication information is produced by a humanoid robot, and whether it is as efficient as for human communicators, are questions that need to be answered to further understanding of the efficacy of humanoid robots for naturalistic human-like communication. Here, we present an experiment which, using a fully within subjects design, shows that there is a marked difference in speech and gesture integration between human and robot communicators, being significantly less effective for the robot. In contrast to beat gestures, the effects of speech emphasis are the same whether that speech is played through a robot or as part of a video of a human. Thus, while integration of speech emphasis and verbal information do occur for robot communicators, integration of non-informative beat gestures and verbal information does not, despite comparable timing and motion profiles to human gestures.

Citation

Bremner, P., & Leonards, U. (2015). Speech and Gesture Emphasis Effects for Robotic and Human Communicators: A Direct Comparison. In Proceedings of the Tenth Annual ACM/IEEE International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction - HRI '15 (255-262). https://doi.org/10.1145/2696454.2696496

Conference Name ACM/IEEE International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction
Conference Location Portland, Oregon, USA
Start Date Mar 2, 2015
End Date Mar 5, 2015
Acceptance Date Nov 24, 2014
Publication Date Jan 1, 2015
Publicly Available Date Mar 28, 2024
Peer Reviewed Peer Reviewed
Volume 2015-March
Pages 255-262
Book Title Proceedings of the Tenth Annual ACM/IEEE International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction - HRI '15
DOI https://doi.org/10.1145/2696454.2696496
Keywords speech, gesture, robots, communication
Public URL https://uwe-repository.worktribe.com/output/837478
Publisher URL http://dx.doi.org/10.1145/2696454.2696496
Additional Information Title of Conference or Conference Proceedings : International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction

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