The Naturalness of Communication with a Conversational Robot: Differences Between Younger and Older Adult

Abstract

To build a good relationship between a conversational robot and a user, trust is important. However, it is not easy to establish trust in conversations with the robot. This study evaluates the naturalness of conversations as a fundamental aspect of building trust by analyzing dialogues between a conversational robot with a large language model and users from different age groups. As a result of experiments in which the robot conversed with both younger and older users, no significant differences were found in how the naturalness of the conversation was perceived across age groups. However, the results suggest that older users may have a more positive impression of the robot compared to younger users.