A Pilot Study on Adaptive Gesture Use in Interaction with Non-native Listeners

Abstract

Given that human speakers adapt their communicative behavior towards non-native listeners -- a phenomenon known as foreigner talk or teacher talk -- the communicative behavior of an interactive, intelligent virtual agent (IIVA) should also to be adaptive towards the needs of non-native listeners. To investigate the question whether it makes sense to distinguish diferent degrees of language proficiency in non-native addressees when designing communicative behavior skills for IIVAs in mixed-cultural settings, we present first results from a pilot study that is meant to prepare a comprehensive corpus collection. Native speakers of German were asked to explain given German terms to non-native speakers of either low or intermediate language proficiency in German. Results showed significant differences in gesture frequency and also in the types and size of gestures being used, depending on the language proficiency of the non-native listener.