Source Orientation in Communication with a Conversational Agent

Do people directly interact with a computer as an independent social actor during simple conversations, or do they orient to the unseen programmer behind the program or an imagined person operating from another room? In the former case the CAS (Computers As Source) model would be valid, while in the latter it would be the CAM (Computers As Media) model that describes the interaction [1]. This study specifically attempts to address the following research questions: (a) Whether the CAM model adequately describes bi-directional communication, and (b) Whether the CAS model adequately describes one-directional communication when the representation of the agent is unfamiliar to the user. Two factors were thus investigated: (1) directions of communication (bi-directional vs. one-directional), and (2) familiarity of the agent’s representation to the user (familiar vs. unfamiliar).

Authors and Affiliations

1. Ritsumeikan University, Japan

   Yugo Hayashi, Hung-Hsuan Huang, Victor V. Kryssanov & Hitoshi Ogawa

2. Suzuka National College of Technology, Japan

   Akira Urao

3. Nagoya University, Japan

   Kazuhisa Miwa

Editors and Affiliations

1. School of Computer Science, Reykjavik University, Menntavegur 1, 101, Reykjavík, Iceland

   Hannes Högni Vilhjálmsson

2. Bielefeld University, CITEC, P.O. Box 100131, 33501, Bielefeld, Germany

   Stefan Kopp

3. Institute for Creative Technologies, University of Southern California, 12015 Waterfront Drive, 90094-2536, Playa Vista, CA, USA

   Stacy Marsella

4. Reykjavik University, CADIA, Menntavegur 1, 101, Reykjavik, Iceland

   Kristinn R. Thórisson

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