Syntactic alignment between computers and people: The role of belief about mental states

H P  Branigan; M J  Pickering; J  Pearson; J F  McLean; C I  Nass

Syntactic alignment between computers and people: The role of belief about mental states

H P Branigan, M J Pickering, J Pearson, J F McLean, C I Nass

School of Philosophy, Psychology and Language Sciences

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceeding › Conference contribution

Abstract / Description of output

People tend to mirror the syntax used by their interlocutors in dialogue. Given that people treat computers as "social actors" in many ways, we might expect them to mirror computers' syntax as well. We report an experiment in which naive participants played a dialogue game in which they believed that they were interacting with either a person or a computer. In fact, in both cases their "interlocutor" was a computer program that produced pre-scripted utterances. Participants demonstrated a very strong tendency to repeat the syntactic form of their "interlocutor's" immediately preceding utterance in both conditions. It does not appear that beliefs about the mental states of one's interlocutor mediate between perception and production.

Original language	English
Title of host publication	Proceedings of the 25th Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society, Pts 1 and 2
Editors	R Alterman, D Kirsh
Place of Publication	Mahwah
Publisher	Lawrence Erlbaum Associates
Pages	186-191
Number of pages	6
ISBN (Print)	0-8058-4991-2
Publication status	Published - 2003

Keywords / Materials (for Non-textual outputs)

COORDINATION
DIALOG

Cite this

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title = "Syntactic alignment between computers and people: The role of belief about mental states",

abstract = "People tend to mirror the syntax used by their interlocutors in dialogue. Given that people treat computers as {"}social actors{"} in many ways, we might expect them to mirror computers' syntax as well. We report an experiment in which naive participants played a dialogue game in which they believed that they were interacting with either a person or a computer. In fact, in both cases their {"}interlocutor{"} was a computer program that produced pre-scripted utterances. Participants demonstrated a very strong tendency to repeat the syntactic form of their {"}interlocutor's{"} immediately preceding utterance in both conditions. It does not appear that beliefs about the mental states of one's interlocutor mediate between perception and production.",

keywords = "COORDINATION, DIALOG",

author = "Branigan, {H P} and Pickering, {M J} and J Pearson and McLean, {J F} and Nass, {C I}",

year = "2003",

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isbn = "0-8058-4991-2",

pages = "186--191",

editor = "R Alterman and D Kirsh",

booktitle = "Proceedings of the 25th Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society, Pts 1 and 2",

publisher = "Lawrence Erlbaum Associates",

}

Syntactic alignment between computers and people: The role of belief about mental states. / Branigan, H P ; Pickering, M J ; Pearson, J et al.
Proceedings of the 25th Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society, Pts 1 and 2. ed. / R Alterman; D Kirsh. Mahwah: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 2003. p. 186-191.

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceeding › Conference contribution

TY - GEN

T1 - Syntactic alignment between computers and people: The role of belief about mental states

AU - Branigan, H P

AU - Pickering, M J

AU - Pearson, J

AU - McLean, J F

AU - Nass, C I

PY - 2003

Y1 - 2003

N2 - People tend to mirror the syntax used by their interlocutors in dialogue. Given that people treat computers as "social actors" in many ways, we might expect them to mirror computers' syntax as well. We report an experiment in which naive participants played a dialogue game in which they believed that they were interacting with either a person or a computer. In fact, in both cases their "interlocutor" was a computer program that produced pre-scripted utterances. Participants demonstrated a very strong tendency to repeat the syntactic form of their "interlocutor's" immediately preceding utterance in both conditions. It does not appear that beliefs about the mental states of one's interlocutor mediate between perception and production.

AB - People tend to mirror the syntax used by their interlocutors in dialogue. Given that people treat computers as "social actors" in many ways, we might expect them to mirror computers' syntax as well. We report an experiment in which naive participants played a dialogue game in which they believed that they were interacting with either a person or a computer. In fact, in both cases their "interlocutor" was a computer program that produced pre-scripted utterances. Participants demonstrated a very strong tendency to repeat the syntactic form of their "interlocutor's" immediately preceding utterance in both conditions. It does not appear that beliefs about the mental states of one's interlocutor mediate between perception and production.

KW - COORDINATION

KW - DIALOG

M3 - Conference contribution

SN - 0-8058-4991-2

SP - 186

EP - 191

BT - Proceedings of the 25th Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society, Pts 1 and 2

A2 - Alterman, R

A2 - Kirsh, D

PB - Lawrence Erlbaum Associates

CY - Mahwah

ER -

Syntactic alignment between computers and people: The role of belief about mental states

Abstract / Description of output

Keywords / Materials (for Non-textual outputs)

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