Introducing Parent Factors to a Conversational Agent: Towards Regular Reection Support on Daily Experiences

Abstract

In this study, we aim to support the maintenance of opportunities for regular reflection on daily life for college students who have insufficient opportunities for reflection. For this purpose, we focus on the reflection through text chat with a conversational agent, and introduce parent factors to the agent in order to enhance familiarity and ease of talk to the agent and to encourage reflection on daily experiences. In this study, the parent factors are defined as “a casual way of speaking” and “questions that concern child’s current situation.” In the experiment, we verified the impact of repeated reflection through text chat with the agent assigned parent factors on the ease of reflection, motivation to reflect and impression of the conversational agent. So, the experiment was conducted a comparison in which participants were asked to reflect regularly in two conditions; with and without “Parent Factor Conversation.” As a result, we confirmed that with each reflection, the ease of reflection improves in both conditions, and this tendency is higher in the condition applied the parent factors. Additionally, it is shown that the parent factors significantly improve the impression of the agent, irrespective of the number of reflections.