Audio subtle expressions affecting user's perceptions

ABSTRACT

Can we assign attitudes to an artifact based on its expressed beep sounds as audio subtle expressions? If so, which kinds of beep sounds are perceived as specific attitudes, such as "disagreement" as a negative attitude, "hesitation" as neutral or "agreement" as positive? To examine this issue, I carried out an experiment to observe and clarify how participants assign an attitude to an artifact according to beeps of different durations and F0 values. The results revealed that 1) sounds with rising tones regardless of duration were perceived by participants as "disagreement," and 2) flat sounds with longer duration were interpreted as "hesitation", and 3) falling tones with shorter duration were taken as "agreement".

REFERENCES

• 1: Breazeal, C., and Velasquez, J. Toward teaching a robot 'infant' using emotive communication acts. In Proceedings of ISAB workshop on Social Situated Intelligence, (1998), Pages 25--40.
• 2: Festinger, L. A theory of cognitive dissonance, ROW, Peterson and Company, (1957).
• 3: Liu, K., and Picard, W, R. Subtle expressivity in a Robotic Computer, In Proceedings of the CHI2003 workshop on Subtle Expressivity for Characters and Robots (2003).
• 4: Morishima, S., Iwasawa, S., Sakaguchi, T., Kawakami, F., and Ando, M. Better Face Communication. In Proceedings of SIGGRAPH95, (1995) Pages 117.
• 5: Noriko Suzuki , Kazuhiko Kakehi , Yugo Takeuchi , Michio Okada, Social effects of the speed of hummed sounds on human-computer interaction, International Journal of Human-Computer Studies, v.60 n.4, p.455-468, April 2004 [doi>10.1016/j.ijhcs.2003.09.007]

INDEX TERMS

Primary Classification:
  H. Information Systems
  H.1 MODELS AND PRINCIPLES
      H.1.2 User/Machine Systems
          Subjects: Human factors

Additional Classification:
  H. Information Systems
  H.5 INFORMATION INTERFACES AND PRESENTATION (I.7)
      H.5.2 User Interfaces (D.2.2, H.1.2, I.3.6)
          Subjects: Voice I/O

General Terms:
Experimentation, Human Factors

Keywords:
affective computing, beeps, prosody, subtle expressions