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This paper investigates users’ speech rate adjustments during conversations with an Amazon Alexa socialbot in response to situational (in-lab vs. at-home) and communicative (ASR comprehension errors) factors. We collected user interaction studies and measured speech rate at each turn in the conversation and in baseline productions (collected prior to the interaction). Overall, we find that users slow their speech rate when talking to the bot, relative to their pre-interaction productions, consistent with hyperarticulation. Speakers use an even slower speech rate in the in-lab setting (relative to at-home). We also see evidence for turn-level entrainment: the user follows the directionality of Alexa’s changes in rate in the immediately preceding turn. Yet, we do not see differences in hyperarticulation or entrainment in response to ASR errors, or on the basis of user ratings of the interaction. Overall, this work has implications for human-computer interaction and theories of linguistic adaptation and entrainment.

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The evolution of deception is a major question in the science of human origins. Several hypotheses have been proposed for its evolution. As part of a suite of cognitive traits, these explanations are often packaged under either the Social Brain Hypothesis, which seeks to explain the current adaptive use of this suite of cognitive traits in human social contexts, and the Foraging Brain Hypothesis, which seeks to explain how external environmental drivers led to a change in the human dietary niche with a subsequent increase in foraging-specific behaviors. As these hypotheses are often presented as competing schools of thought, few lines have been proposed linking these competing explanations together. Utilizing cross-cultural data gathered from the Human Relations Area File, we identify numerous (n = 366) examples of the application of deception towards prey across 147 cultures. By comparing similar behaviors in non-human animals which utilize a hunting strategy known as aggressive mimicry, we suggest a potential pathway through which the evolution of deception may have taken place. Rather than deception evolving within social contexts, we suggest social applications of deception in humans could have evolved from an original context of these applications towards prey. We discuss this framework with regards to the evolution of other mental traits including language, theory of mind, and empathy.