Host: The Japanese Society for Cognitive Psychology
Embodied agents quipped to the information systems make communication between users and agents more smoothly, which in turn lead users to more high order usage. We have a hypothesis that human-like interaction with agents may be based on user’s perceptions of animacy to the agent. In order to investigate whether users perceiving animacy to the agents or not, and also to know how those animacy perception will be affected by the physical embodiment of agent, we executed an experiment to compare three agent conditions with a microwave oven: the embodied condition equipped with the antheropomorphization robots shaped eyes and arms, the voice_only condition equipped with the agent’s voice, and the control condition without agent. Each of 36 participants who were older adults (aged over 65) and younger adults (undergrad students) executed the usability test of the oven and evaluated the subjective perceptions of its animacy. The result showed two type of animacy; lifelikeness and intelligence. Older adults showed increasing with both types of animacy when the agent had the embodiment, whereas younger adults decreased evaluation of intelligence with the physical embodiment. Based on the differences between two age groups, we would like to propose a model of agency, perception of animacy, and the base system.
