Adapted Foreigner-directed Communication towards Virtual Agents
Birgit Lugrin, Benjamin Eckstein, Kirsten von Bergmann, Corinna Heindl · 2018
People tend to adapt to their conversation partners. In mixed-cultural settings, with a native and a non-native speaker, adaptation can manifest itself in the usage of simplified language or increased usage of nonverbal scaffolding to foster understanding. In this contribution, we address the question whether the phenomenon of AFC (adapted, foreigner-directed communication) is also shown towards a virtual agent. We therefore implemented a demonstrator with a local and a foreign agent that interact with human users in a direction giving scenario. A user study revealed that participants behaved differently towards the two agents and adapted both, their verbal and their non-verbal behaviour. We are thus confident, that our demonstrator is well suited to systematically study AFC.