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Lexical Entrainment in Human Robot Interaction

Do Humans Use Their Vocabulary to Robots?

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Abstract

This paper reveals that lexical entrainment, in which a person tends to change her verbal expressions to match those said by her addressee, occurs in interactions between people and a robot when they refer to an object in a shared physical space. Many studies argue that lexical entrainment is crucial for understanding the principle of human dialogue and the development of the natural language interfaces of artificial media. However, few studies of it exist in human robot interaction in which humans and robot share a physical space. If lexical entrainment occurs in situations where a physical space is shared with a robot, such findings will contribute to the development of natural language interfaces with social robots. We designed experimental tests in which participants refer to an object and a robot confirms it and measured the extent to which the participants repeated the same verbal expressions said by the robot. Our subjects tended to adopt both the same verbal expressions and lexical categories as the robot.

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Acknowledgments

This research was supported by the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications of Japan and JSPS KAKENHI Grant Number 25730165 and the Project for Strategic Development of Advanced Robotics Elemental Technologies of New Energy and Industrial Technology Development Organization (NEDO), Japan.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. ATR Intelligent Robotics and Communication Laboratories, 2-2-2 Hikaridai, Keihanna Science City, Kyoto, 619-0288, Japan

    Takamasa Iio, Masahiro Shiomi, Kazuhiko Shinozawa & Norihiro Hagita

  2. Doshisha University, 1-3 Tatara Miyakodani, Kyotanabe , 610-0394, Japan

    Katsunori Shimohara & Mitsunori Miki

Authors
  1. Takamasa Iio
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  2. Masahiro Shiomi
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  3. Kazuhiko Shinozawa
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  4. Katsunori Shimohara
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  5. Mitsunori Miki
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  6. Norihiro Hagita
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Correspondence to Takamasa Iio.

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Iio, T., Shiomi, M., Shinozawa, K. et al. Lexical Entrainment in Human Robot Interaction. Int J of Soc Robotics 7, 253–263 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12369-014-0255-x

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12369-014-0255-x

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