Judgment of the Humanness of an Interlocutor Is in the Eye of the Beholder

Despite tremendous advances in artificial language synthesis, no machine has so far succeeded in deceiving a human. Most research focused on analyzing the behavior of “good” machine. We here choose an opposite strategy, by analyzing the behavior of “bad” humans, i.e., humans perceived as machine. The Loebner Prize in Artificial Intelligence features humans and artificial agents trying to convince judges on their humanness via computer-mediated communication. Using this setting as a model, we investigated here whether the linguistic behavior of human subjects perceived as non-human would enable us to identify some of the core parameters involved in the judgment of an agents' humanness. We analyzed descriptive and semantic aspects of dialogues in which subjects succeeded or failed to convince judges of their humanness. Using cognitive and emotional dimensions in a global behavioral characterization, we demonstrate important differences in the patterns of behavioral expressiveness of the judges whether they perceived their interlocutor as being human or machine. Furthermore, the indicators of interest displayed by the judges were predictive of the final judgment of humanness. Thus, we show that the judgment of an interlocutor's humanness during a social interaction depends not only on his behavior, but also on the judge himself. Our results thus demonstrate that the judgment of humanness is in the eye of the beholder

Use of Virtual Reality Tools for Vestibular Disorders Rehabilitation: A Comprehensive Analysis

Classical peripheral vestibular disorders rehabilitation is a long and costly process. While virtual reality settings have been repeatedly suggested to represent possible tools to help the rehabilitation process, no systematic study had been conducted so far. We systematically reviewed the current literature to analyze the published protocols documenting the use of virtual reality settings for peripheral vestibular disorders rehabilitation. There is an important diversity of settings and protocols involving virtual reality settings for the treatment of this pathology. Evaluation of the symptoms is often not standardized. However, our results unveil a clear effect of virtual reality settings-based rehabilitation of the patients' symptoms, assessed by objectives tools such as the DHI (mean decrease of 27 points), changing symptoms handicap perception from moderate to mild impact on life. Furthermore, we detected a relationship between the duration of the exposure to virtual reality environments and the magnitude of the therapeutic effects, suggesting that virtual reality treatments should last at least 150 minutes of cumulated exposure to ensure positive outcomes. Virtual reality offers a pleasant and safe environment for the patient. Future studies should standardize evaluation tools, document putative side effects further, compare virtual reality to conventional physical therapy, and evaluate economical costs/benefits of such strategies

Use of Virtual Reality Tools for Vestibular Disorders Rehabilitation: A Comprehensive Analysis

Classical peripheral vestibular disorders rehabilitation is a long and costly process. While virtual reality settings have been repeatedly suggested to represent possible tools to help the rehabilitation process, no systematic study had been conducted so far. We systematically reviewed the current literature to analyze the published protocols documenting the use of virtual reality settings for peripheral vestibular disorders rehabilitation. There is an important diversity of settings and protocols involving virtual reality settings for the treatment of this pathology. Evaluation of the symptoms is often not standardized. However, our results unveil a clear effect of virtual reality settings-based rehabilitation of the patients’ symptoms, assessed by objectives tools such as the DHI (mean decrease of 27 points), changing symptoms handicap perception from moderate to mild impact on life. Furthermore, we detected a relationship between the duration of the exposure to virtual reality environments and the magnitude of the therapeutic effects, suggesting that virtual reality treatments should last at least 150 minutes of cumulated exposure to ensure positive outcomes. Virtual reality offers a pleasant and safe environment for the patient. Future studies should standardize evaluation tools, document putative side effects further, compare virtual reality to conventional physical therapy, and evaluate economical costs/benefits of such strategies

Number of compliments.

<p>Number of compliments that the subjects and the judges gave each other when the subjects were perceived as humans, <i>p</i><.05 (Student paired t-test).</p

Patterns of behavioral expressiveness of the subjects whether they were perceived as humans or as robots.

<p>Patterns are based on the subjects' results on the five dimensions selected (aggressiveness, self-references, references to relatives, compliments, emotions).</p

Descriptive parameters.

<p>Analysis of the descriptive parameters of the dialogues for each of the four groups. Results are presented as mean ± SEM. Significant differences are indicated in <b>bold</b>. Statistical analyses were performed using Wilcoxon paired test (W) and Student paired t-test (T).</p

Indicators of interest.

<p>(a) The number of questions, (b) questions per post and (c) cognitive words the subjects and the judges have displayed when the subjects were perceived as humans, <i>p</i><.05 (Student paired t-tests).</p

Patterns of behavioral expressiveness of the judges whether they perceived their communication partners as humans or as robots.

<p>Patterns are based on the judges' results on the five dimensions selected (aggressiveness, self-references, references to relatives, compliments, emotions). Note that the two patterns are significantly different (<i>p</i><.05, Kolmogorov-Smirnov test).</p

Age differences in voice evaluation (Lortie et al., 2018)

<div>Purpose: The factors that influence the evaluation of voice in adulthood, as well as the consequences of such evaluation on social interactions, are not well understood. Here, we examined the effect of listeners’ age and the effect of talker age, sex, and smoking status on the auditory-perceptual evaluation of voice, voice-related psychosocial attributions, and perceived speech tempo. We also examined the voice dimensions affecting the propensity to engage in social interactions.</div><div>Method: Twenty-five younger (age 19–37 years) and 25 older (age 51–74 years) healthy adults participated in this cross-sectional study. Their task was to evaluate the voice of 80 talkers.</div><div>Results: Statistical analyses revealed limited effects of the age of the listener on voice evaluation. Specifically, older listeners provided relatively more favorable voice ratings than younger listeners, mainly in terms of roughness. In contrast, the age of the talker had a broader impact on voice evaluation, affecting auditory-perceptual evaluations, psychosocial attributions, and perceived speech tempo. Some of these talker differences were dependent upon the sex of the talker and his or her smoking status. Finally, the results also show that voice-related psychosocial attribution was more strongly associated with the propensity of the listener to engage in social interactions with a person than auditory-perceptual dimensions and perceived speech tempo, especially for the younger adults.</div><div>Conclusions: These results suggest that age has a broad influence on voice evaluation, with a stronger impact for talker age compared with listener age. While voice-related psychosocial attributions may be an important determinant of social interactions, perceived voice quality and speech tempo appear to be less influential.</div><div><br></div><div><b>Supplemental Material S1. </b>Results for the talker voice analysis. </div><div><br></div><div>Lortie, C. L., Deschamps, I., Guitton, M. J., & Tremblay, P. (2018). Age differences in voice evaluation: From auditory-perceptual evaluation to social interactions. <i>Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research, 61,</i> 277–245. https://doi.org/10.1044/2017_JSLHR-S-16-0202</div