Abstract
Advances in artificial intelligence and computer graphics digital technologies have contributed to a relative increase in realism in virtual characters. Preserving virtual characters’ communicative realism, in particular, joined the ranks of the improvements in natural language technology, and animation algorithms. This paper focuses on culturally relevant paralinguistic cues in nonverbal communication. We model the effects of an English-speaking digital character with different accents on human interactants (i.e., users). Our cultural influence model proposes that paralinguistic realism, in the form of accented speech, is effective in promoting culturally congruent cognition only when it is self-relevant to users. For example, a Chinese or Middle Eastern English accent may be perceived as foreign to individuals who do not share the same ethnic cultural background with members of those cultures. However, for individuals who are familiar and affiliate with those cultures (i.e., in-group members who are bicultural), accent not only serves as a motif of shared social identity, it also primes them to adopt culturally appropriate interpretive frames that influence their decision making.
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Notes
This approach represents a significant contribution to the field of communication science. Communication scholars in the area of psycho-social-linguistics typically use Lambert’s (1967) matched guise paradigm. In this paradigm, the same speaker (a bicultural research confederate) displays at least two accents and researchers study the effect on listeners. Our method utilizing advanced AI, natural language, and animation technology overcomes traditional problems with the matched-guise technique because it uses a visually identical speaker, hence matched-guise, while being able to use two different voices. The problem with Lambert’s original matched guise paradigm, which is still prevalent (Fuertes et al. 2012), is that the same person speaks different variations of an accent. While it is plausible that bi-lingual people can adeptly speak both native and accented English, there is likely a slight difference between the different accents, e.g., one accent might have a slight accent infused from the other language. There are also potential confounds that could arise, due to the person speaking in both accents, because other behaviors congruent with that culture, such as gesture, might get inadvertently primed. Virtual characters allow us to use different real people speaking English in various accents, while still keeping the character’s visual appearances and non-verbal behaviors identical.
Praat, http://www.fon.hum.uva.nl/praat/.
OKAO Technology, http://www.omron.com/r_d/coretech/vision/okao.html.
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Acknowledgments
The authors would like to thank Jim Blascovich and Ari Shapiro for comments on drafts of this manuscript. A postdoctoral fellowship from the ARL HRED Cognitive Sciences Branch supported the first author.
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Khooshabeh, P., Dehghani, M., Nazarian, A. et al. The cultural influence model: when accented natural language spoken by virtual characters matters. AI & Soc 32, 9–16 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00146-014-0568-1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00146-014-0568-1