Relationship between trust and entrainment in speech
Grant Relationship between trust and entrainment in speech
Air Force Office of Scientific Research, FA9550-15-1-0055
People PI: Stefan Benus, Constantine the Philosopher University in Nitra, Slovakia
Co-PI: Agustin Gravano, University of Buenos Aires, Argentina
Objective Test a hypothesized correlation between:
  • Entrainment (the tendency of conversational partners to speak in a similar way)
  • Trust (reliance on another party's capabilities and knowledge when making decisions)
    • in human-machine interactions in non-Germanic languages
    Approach
  • Design a novel interactive game in which subjects make decisions of different stakes
  • Avatars provide advice; synthesized voices entrain (or not) to the subject on several features (pitch, intensity, rate)
  • Quality of advice is controled/balanced; Which avatar is chosen (trusted) more often?
  • Test in native Slovak, Spanish, and L2 English for Slovak/Spanish speakers (vary also entrainment on the level of L1 interference)

    • Position available

    Designing and implementing a basic computer game in which a player is required to perform various actions (e.g. find a way to certain place, collect some item(s), avoid danger(s), etc.) and communicate with the system through interactive voice features. Hence, the game will also have a speech synthesis/recognition module that will provide advice to the player. This module will be developed separately but the game architecture must allow for its integration and functionality. The game could be designed from scratch (possibly using tools like OpenWonderLand (http://openwonderland.org), OpenSimulator (http://opensimulator.org), OpenSceneGraph (http://www.openscenegraph.org/), Unreal engine (http://www.unrealengine.com/), or other), or adapted from a suitable existing open source game.
    Inquire at sbenus@ukf.sk