Abstract
Our research goal is to investigate interpersonal relations involving empathy in human–computer interaction. We focus on mimicry behavior and its ability to elicit intentional stance of a partner in interaction. In this study, we conducted a psychological experiment to examine how prosodic mimicry by computers affects people. An interactive system in this experiment uses an animated character that mimics the prosodic features in a human’s voice echoicly by synthesizing the hummed sounds. The sounds consist only of prosodic components similar to continuous humming of the open vowel /a/ or /o/ without any language information. The subjects completed a questionnaire to evaluate the character at different mimicry ratio. The results indicated the following possibilities: First, people favorably interpret a computer’s simple response such as echoic mimicry using hummed sounds mixed with a slightly constant prosody response. Second, people may establish an interpersonal relations with a computer through such facilitated interaction.
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