Source Orientation in Communication with a Conversational Agent

Abstract

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).