Hey Google, Do Unicorns Exist?

Lovato, Silvia B.; Piper, Anne Marie; Wartella, Ellen

doi:10.1145/3311927.3323150

Cited by 112 publications

(30 citation statements)

References 35 publications

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“…Although previous research has often reported friendly interactions with, and perceptions of, DVAs (Druga et al, 2017;Lovato et al, 2019), this inquiry has revealed a mixed picture: results show both friendly and affable as well as unfriendly and aggressive tones. Even though extremely friendly or aggressive voices might be exceptions, the overall tone is skewed towards the plain, dominant and unfriendly voices that the children used to communicate with the DVAs -an issue of increasing importance among researchers as well as corporate DVA developers (Bonfert et al, 2018;Biele et al, 2019).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 67%

“…Preliminary research into DVAs has shown not only how they are integrated into daily family life (Porcheron, Fischer, Reeves, & Sharples, 2018;Beirl, Yuill, & Rogers, 2019) and how families use various strategies to overcome communication barriers with DVAs (Beneteau et al, 2019), but also how children probe and explore different dimensions of DVAs' perceived intelligence (e.g., how accurately and consistently DVAs answer knowledgebased questions), their preprogrammed personality traits, and their conversational capabilities (Lovato & Piper, 2015;Druga, Williams, Breazeal, & Resnick, 2017;Druga, 2018;Sciuto, Saini, Forlizzi, & Hong, 2018;Lovato, Piper, & Wartella, 2019).…”

Section: Literature Review Of Child-machine Interactionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Alexa, What Are You? Exploring Primary School Children’s Ontological Perceptions of Digital Voice Assistants in Open Interactions

Festerling¹,

Siraj²

2020

Human Development

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Today's children grow up in an environment that is increasingly characterized by digital voice assistants (DVAs), such as Alexa, Siri, or the Google Assistant. This paper argues that any attempt to investigate children's interactions with, and perceptions of, DVAs should be based on the theoretical grounds of an ontological framework that considers children's genuine understanding of what it means to be human and what it means to be a machine. Based on focus groups and a gamified data collection design, our empirical inquiry applied qualitative methods to explore primary school children's (n = 27, age range: 6-10 years, average age: 8.6 years) open interactions with DVAs. In particular, our focus was on how DVAs were embedded in children's general ontological belief system, and how children interpreted certain aspects of DVAs' interactive capabilities as being genuinely humanoid or non-humanoid. On the one hand, our findings suggest that children's interactions with DVAs might be more an end in itself than a means to an end, meaning that children primarily interact with DVAs for the sake of engaging excitement instead of using the devices' utilitarian functionalities. On the other hand, we found that children in our sample held firm ontological beliefs about the distinct nature of humans and machines, whilst interpreting certain aspects of DVAs' interactive capabilities as being genuinely humanoid (e.g., non-responsiveness, delayed responses, inaccuracy) and non-humanoid (e.g., permanent responsiveness, promptness, accuracy, limited conversational capacities, lack of common sense, standardized responses) at the same time.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 67%

Section: Literature Review Of Child-machine Interactionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Alexa, What Are You? Exploring Primary School Children’s Ontological Perceptions of Digital Voice Assistants in Open Interactions

Festerling¹,

Siraj²

2020

Human Development

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

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“…Studies have found that children enjoy their spontaneous interactions with CAs in their homes; children initiated questions (e.g., "Hey Google, does unicorn exist? "; Lovato, Piper, & Wartella, 2019) or commanded CAs to perform small tasks (e.g., "Hey Alexa, play a Christmas song"; Sciuto, Saini, Forlizzi, & Hong, 2018). Despite the popularity of these affordable and versatile smart speakers, little research has been carried out to build CA systems based on smart speakers to support children's language development.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Same benefits, different communication patterns: Comparing Children's reading with a conversational agent vs. a human partner

Wang²,

Collins

et al. 2021

Computers & Education

100

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“…Our data in the voice tutor condition also provide insights into the effectiveness of voice assistants such as Amazon Alexa and Apple Siri. Research with children suggests that voice assistants are perceived as a source of information that can answer questions about a wide range of subjects, including language such as definitions, spellings, and translations (Lovato et al, 2019). Our results show that adults can learn a second language from voice assistants as well, at least to the same extent they do with social robots.…”

Section: Limitations and Future Directionsmentioning

confidence: 55%

When Even a Robot Tutor Zooms: A Study of Embodiment, Attitudes, and Impressions

et al. 2021

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This study used an online second language (L2) vocabulary lesson to evaluate whether the physical body (i.e., embodiment) of a robot tutor has an impact on how the learner learns from the robot. In addition, we tested how individual differences in attitudes toward robots, first impressions of the robot, anxiety in learning L2, and personality traits may be related to L2 vocabulary learning. One hundred Turkish-speaking young adults were taught eight English words in a one-on-one Zoom session either with a NAO robot tutor (N = 50) or with a voice-only tutor (N = 50). The findings showed that participants learned the vocabulary equally well from the robot and voice tutors, indicating that the physical embodiment of the robot did not change learning gains in a short vocabulary lesson. Further, negative attitudes toward robots had negative effects on learning for participants in the robot tutor condition, but first impressions did not predict vocabulary learning in either of the two conditions. L2 anxiety, on the other hand, negatively predicted learning outcomes in both conditions. We also report that attitudes toward robots and the impressions of the robot tutor remained unchanged before and after the lesson. As one of the first to examine the effectiveness of robots as an online lecturer, this study presents an example of comparable learning outcomes regardless of physical embodiment.

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Hey Google, Do Unicorns Exist?

Cited by 112 publications

References 35 publications

Alexa, What Are You? Exploring Primary School Children’s Ontological Perceptions of Digital Voice Assistants in Open Interactions

Alexa, What Are You? Exploring Primary School Children’s Ontological Perceptions of Digital Voice Assistants in Open Interactions

Same benefits, different communication patterns: Comparing Children's reading with a conversational agent vs. a human partner

When Even a Robot Tutor Zooms: A Study of Embodiment, Attitudes, and Impressions

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