Related papers: Kawaii Game Vocalics: A Preliminary Model
The phenomenon of sound symbolism, the non-arbitrary mapping between word sounds and meanings, has long been demonstrated through anecdotal experiments like Bouba Kiki, but rarely tested at scale. We present the first computational…
It can be difficult to critically reflect on technology that has become part of everyday rituals and routines. To combat this, speculative and fictional approaches have previously been used by HCI to decontextualise the familiar and imagine…
We present the first English corpus study on abusive language towards three conversational AI systems gathered "in the wild": an open-domain social bot, a rule-based chatbot, and a task-based system. To account for the complexity of the…
Perceptions of gender are a significant aspect of human-human interaction, and gender has wide-reaching social implications for robots deployed in contexts where they are expected to interact with humans. This work explored two flexible…
We present STUDIES, a new speech corpus for developing a voice agent that can speak in a friendly manner. Humans naturally control their speech prosody to empathize with each other. By incorporating this "empathetic dialogue" behavior into…
As technologies become more and more pervasive, there is a need for considering the affective dimension of interaction with computer systems to make them more human-like. Current demands for this matter include accurate emotion recognition,…
With the rise of human-machine communication, machines are increasingly designed with humanlike characteristics, such as gender, which can inadvertently trigger cognitive biases. Many conversational agents (CAs), such as voice assistants…
Avatar customization is known to positively affect crucial outcomes in numerous domains. However, it is unknown whether audial customization can confer the same benefits as visual customization. We conducted a preregistered 2 x 2 (visual…
Voice is an essential modality for human-robot interaction (HRI). The way a robot sounds plays a central role in shaping how humans perceive and engage with it, influencing factors such as intelligibility, understandability, and likability.…
Recent years have seen an explosion in the availability of Voice User Interfaces. However, user surveys suggest that there are issues with respect to usability, and it has been hypothesised that contemporary voice-enabled systems are…
Wake-up words (WUW) is a short sentence used to activate a speech recognition system to receive the user's speech input. WUW utterances include not only the lexical information for waking up the system but also non-lexical information such…
AI-controlled characters in fighting games are expected to possess reasonably high skills and behave in a believable, human-like manner, exhibiting a diversity of play styles and strategies. Thus, the development of fighting game AI…
Do speakers of different languages talk differently about what they see? Behavioural and cognitive studies report cultural effects on perception; however, these are mostly limited in scope and hard to replicate. In this work, we conduct the…
Human-like agents are an increasingly important topic in games and beyond. Believable non-player characters enhance the gaming experience by improving immersion and providing entertainment. They also offer players the opportunity to engage…
AI companions are increasingly popular among teenagers, yet current platforms lack safeguards to address developmental risks and harmful normalization. Despite growing concerns, little is known about how parents and developmental psychology…
We present JNV (Japanese Nonverbal Vocalizations) corpus, a corpus of Japanese nonverbal vocalizations (NVs) with diverse phrases and emotions. Existing Japanese NV corpora lack phrase or emotion diversity, which makes it difficult to…
The rapid evolution of large language models necessitates effective benchmarks for evaluating their role knowledge, which is essential for establishing connections with the real world and providing more immersive interactions. This paper…
Conversations with non-player characters (NPCs) in games are typically confined to dialogue between a human player and a virtual agent, where the conversation is initiated and controlled by the player. To create richer, more believable…
Recent advances in artificial intelligence have been strongly driven by the use of game environments for training and evaluating agents. Games are often accessible and versatile, with well-defined state-transitions and goals allowing for…
Conversational practice, while crucial for all language learners, can be challenging to get enough of and very expensive. Chatbots are computer programs developed to engage in conversations with humans. They are designed as software avatars…