How Willingness to Interact and Intelligibility of the Voice affect children’s interaction with an interactive dialogue system A pilot Study

This paper reports a pilot study conducted on 20 children (10 male) aged between 7 to 9 years with aim evaluating which are factors that influenced their first impressions in relationship with a interactive dialogue systems. Participants viewed 13 videoclip lasting 4 seconds showing: 8 virtual agents (divided in 4 adults and 4 children), equally balanced by gender and voice (synthetic vs human), 4 virtual animal agents (respectively male and female dogs and cats) with a human voice and a videoclip of a humanoid robot (Pepper). The Virtual Agent Voice Acceptance Questionnaire (VAVAQ), the version adapted and simplified for children's understanding, has been used for the virtual agents’ assessment. Outcomes show that children disclosed a greater willingness to interact with the female adult agent compared to all other agents considered in this study and moreover, a strongly preference for the agents with human voices over those with synthetic voices.