Speech Perception and Implementation in a Virtual Medical Assistant
Résumé
In emergency medical procedures, positive and trusting interactions between followers and leaders are imperative. That interaction is even more important when a virtual agent assumes the leader role and a human assumes the follower role. In order to manage the human-computer interaction, situational leadership is employed to match the human follower to an appropriate leadership style embodied by the agent. Situational leadership was used to create 33 utterances indicative of the four different leadership styles. A participant evaluation was then carried out in order to examine (1) whether perceptions of leader trust and motivation vary dependent on both readiness level and utterance syntax and (2) whether follower ability and willingness are affected by the leader’s speech. We found that general perceptions of leadership behavior influenced follower performance and that the leader’s speech influences followers’ ability. Finally, we demonstrate how the results of this study are implemented in a virtual agent system.