"Phantom Friend" or "Just a Box with Information": Personification and Ontological Categorization of Smart Speaker-based Voice Assistants by Older Adults

In the paper

“Researchers have also studied how people from different age groups perceive robots, finding that younger, mid-aged and older adults have similar attitudes towards comfort and social impacts of robots [3].”

What the sources say

• Supported

  The Conclusions state that younger, middle-aged, and older adults responded similarly regarding robots’ social impact and comfort with robots. They note some differences between age groups, but say almost all perceptions were similar. (LLM, conf=0.94)

  cites [3] 3. Uba Backonja, Amanda K. Hall, Ian Painter, Laura Kneale, Amanda Lazar, Maya Cakmak, Hilaire J. Thompson, and George Demiris. 2018. Comfort and Attitudes Towards Robots Among Young, Middle-Aged, and Older Adults: A Cross-Sectional Study. Journal of Nursing Scholarship 50, 6: 623-633. https://doi.org/10.1111/jnu.12430 source

In the paper

“Specific to older adults, some studies in HCI and HRI indicate older adults' preference for using robots for household purposes more than for companionship [5,13]”

What the sources say

• Partly supported

  The Results (Assistance Preference Checklist Data; page unavailable) report that older adults preferred robot assistance for many household tasks, particularly cleaning. The study compared robot versus human assistance for home-based tasks; it did not compare household uses of robots with companionship, so the claimed relative preference is unsupported. (LLM, conf=0.86)

  cites [5] 5. J. M. Beer, C. Smarr, T. L. Chen, A. Prakash, T. L. Mitzner, C. C. Kemp, and W. A. Rogers. 2012. The domesticated robot: Design guidelines for assisting older adults to age in place. In 2012 7th ACM/IEEE International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction (HRI), 335-342. https://doi.org/10.1145/2157689.2157806 sourceExperimental — accuracy not yet measured
• Partly supported

  In “Acceptance of robot companions” (page unavailable), 96.4% of participants wanted a robot that could do household jobs, while none of the study’s older participants wanted one as a friend. But the study’s limitations (page unavailable) state that no participant was older than 55, so its findings do not establish this preference for older adults generally. (LLM, conf=0.88)

  cites [13] 13. K. Dautenhahn, S. Woods, C. Kaouri, M. L. Walters, and and I. Werry. 2005. What is a robot companion -friend, assistant or butler? In 2005 IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems, 1192-1197. https://doi.org/10.1109/IROS.2005.1545189 sourceExperimental — accuracy not yet measured

In the paper

“In HRI literature although there is some evidence suggesting technology in form of social robots can reduce loneliness for older adults (e.g., [4,31])”

What the sources say

• ?Not checked — no full text of the sourcecites [4] 4. Marian R. Banks, Lisa M. Willoughby, and William A. Banks. 2008. Animal-Assisted Therapy and Loneliness in Nursing Homes: Use of Robotic versus Living Dogs. Journal of the American Medical Directors Association 9, 3: 173- 177. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jamda.2007.11.007 source
• Supported

  The Abstract (p. 216) reports a statistically significant decrease in loneliness scores after older patients interacted with the pet-type robot AIBO. The Discussion (p. 217) also describes a significant reduction, supporting the citing sentence’s cautious claim that social robots can reduce loneliness in older adults. (LLM, conf=0.93)

  cites [31] 31. Masao Kanamori, Mizue Suzuki, and Misao Tanaka. 2002. Maintenance and improvement of quality of life among elderly patients using a pet-type robot. Nihon Ronen Igakkai Zasshi. Japanese Journal of Geriatrics 39, 2: 214-218. source

In the paper

“Unlike that past work, though, participants in our study also saw Alexa as human-like and object-like, and moved between these categorizations.”

In the paper

“such as”

In the paper

“These examples show how the human-like vs. machine-like categorization changed over time.”

In the paper

“Just as Alexa was seen as providing social interaction when it was responsive and engaging in small talk, it reverted to an object when it did not provide these forms of interaction.”

In the paper

“For example, participants personified the agent when supporting human-like conversations or providing social support, but also dehumanized it due to lack of responsiveness or personal touch.”

In the paper

“Similar to past work [57], we found that Alexa was repeatedly referred to in human-like terms.”

What the sources say

• ?Not checked — no full text of the sourcecites [57] 57. Alisha Pradhan, Kanika Mehta, and Leah Findlater. 2018. "Accessibility Came by Accident": Use of Voice-Controlled Intelligent Personal Assistants by People with Disabilities. In Proceedings of the 2018 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI '18), 459:1-459:13. https://doi.org/10.1145/3173574.3174033 source

In the paper

“When participants felt the device's presence (i.e., perceived ubiquitousness), they thought of it as human-like.”

• Also stated in: § 3.2.3 Changes over the Longer Term, Location and from Moment to Moment. · plain

  “This presence was tied to a location: their home.”

In the paper

“In our study, some attached more value and deeper feelings to the assistant, while others considered the interactions as mostly inconsequential.”

In the paper

“Aligning with the complex categorizations of other participants, P5 refused to categorize Alexa at all, instead designating a new category:”

In the paper

“Like other in-depth qualitative work with a small sample size, we do not intend to obtain generalizable results [32,47].”

What the sources say

• ?Not checked — no full text of the sourcecites [32] 32. Evangelos Karapanos, Jean-Bernard Martens, and Marc Hassenzahl. 2010. On the Retrospective Assessment of Users' Experiences over Time: Memory or Actuality? In CHI '10 Extended Abstracts on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI EA '10), 4075-4080. https://doi.org/10.1145/1753846.1754105 source
• ?Not checked — no full text of the sourcecites [47] 47. Irene Lopatovska and Harriet Williams. 2018. Personification of the Amazon Alexa: BFF or a Mindless Companion. In Proceedings of the 2018 Conference on Human Information Interaction&Retrieval -CHIIR '18, 265-268. https://doi.org/10.1145/3176349.3176868 source

In the paper

“Epley et al. [17] enlist three factors-“elicited agent knowledge or anthropocentric knowledge”, “effectance motivation”, and “sociality”-to explain anthropomorphizing behavior”

What the sources say

• ?Not checked — no full text of the sourcecites [17] 17. Nicholas Epley, Adam Waytz, and John T. Cacioppo. 2007. On seeing human: a three-factor theory of anthropomorphism. Psychological Review 114, 4: 864-886. https://doi.org/10.1037/0033-295X.114.4.864 source

In the paper

“The nature of each these primary commands was coded as “polite”, “rude” or “neutral” using a using a multi-step process by two research team members [24], achieving a Cohen's Kappa of 0.91.”

What the sources say

• ?Not checked — no full text of the sourcecites [24] 24. Daniel J. Hruschka, Deborah Schwartz, Daphne Cobb St.John, Erin Picone-Decaro, Richard A. Jenkins, and James W. Carey. 2004. Reliability in Coding Open-Ended Data: Lessons Learned from HIV Behavioral Research. Field Methods 16, 3: 307-331. https://doi.org/10.1177/1525822X04266540 source

In the paper

“The quote above indicates that polite behavior such as saying thank you is learned over time until it becomes natural -resonating with past work [46].”

What the sources say

• ?Not checked — no full text of the sourcecites [46] 46. Yuting Liao, Jessica Vitak, Priya Kumar, Michael Zimmer, and Katherine Kritikos. 2019. Understanding the Role of Privacy and Trust in Intelligent Personal Assistant Adoption. In Information in Contemporary Society (Lecture Notes in Computer Science), 102-113. source

In the paper

“These calls provided us with daily interaction data that helped us to probe for indepth explanations during weekly in-person interviews, but may also have resulted in an increased usage of Alexa due to reminders about its presence.”

In the paper

“Finally, the population with whom we engaged, though diverse in some ways, has a specific set of characteristics -they are all over 65, had no experience with voice assistants, and did not use smartphones, computers or tablets regularly.”

In the paper

“Hope et al. [22] identified that older adults' “social communications” include both physical and digital spaces (e.g., printing out a typed letter and sending it through physical mail), which is lacking in the current day social media technologies.”

What the sources say

• ?Not checked — no full text of the sourcecites [22] 22. Alexis Hope, Ted Schwaba, and Anne Marie Piper. 2014. Understanding digital and material social communications for older adults. In Proceedings of the 32nd annual ACM conference on Human factors in computing systems -CHI '14, 3903-3912. https://doi.org/10.1145/2556288.2557133 source

In the paper

“In this work, our analysis primarily draws upon linguistic theory, that everyday language used to label objects can reveal ontologies [18], also corroborated with several instances of self-reported participants' mental states (e.g., the feeling of not being alone in the house), thus drawing on the mentalistic theory as well.”

What the sources say

• ?Not matched

  Couldn’t be matched to a paper in Crossref, so it can’t be checked.

  cites [18] 18. Brian Epstein. 2018. Social Ontology. In The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Summer 2018), Edward N. Zalta (ed.). Metaphysics Research Lab, Stanford University.

In the paper

“Epley's framework, which has not yet been applied to conversational voice assistants, claims that self-knowledge or knowledge about human characteristics in general would serve as the readily available (or accessible) induction base for reasoning of nonhuman objects, thus contributing to easily available anthropocentric knowledge.”

What the sources say

• ?Not checked — no full text of the sourcecites [17] 17. Nicholas Epley, Adam Waytz, and John T. Cacioppo. 2007. On seeing human: a three-factor theory of anthropomorphism. Psychological Review 114, 4: 864-886. https://doi.org/10.1037/0033-295X.114.4.864 source

In the paper

“This suggests that the perception of Alexa as human-like emerged when it was filling a social need for her -and it might return to object-like when she no longer needed it.”

In the paper

“At the same time, there has been a significant body of research on anthropomorphization that has not yet been applied to this domain.”

In the paper

“Our understanding of the relationship between anthropomorphism, embodiment and voice assistants, although grounded in past work, is based on a specific sample as is common with qualitative work on smart speakers (e.g., children [16], people with disabilities [56] or multi-user family based households [54]).”

What the sources say

• ?Not checked — no full text of the sourcecites [16] 16. Stefania Druga, Randi Williams, Cynthia Breazeal, and Mitchel Resnick. 2017. "Hey Google is It OK if I Eat You?": Initial Explorations in Child-Agent Interaction. In Proceedings of the 2017 Conference on Interaction Design and Children (IDC '17), 595-600. https://doi.org/10.1145/3078072.3084330 source
• ?Not checked — no full text of the sourcecites [56] 56. François Portet, Michel Vacher, Caroline Golanski, Camille Roux, and Brigitte Meillon. 2013. Design and evaluation of a smart home voice interface for the elderly: acceptability and objection aspects. Personal and Ubiquitous Computing 17, 1: 127-144. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00779-011-0470-5 source
• ?Not checked — no full text of the sourcecites [54] 54. Martin Porcheron, Joel E. Fischer, Moira McGregor, Barry Brown, Ewa Luger, Heloisa Candello, and Kenton O'Hara. 2017. Talking with Conversational Agents in Collaborative Action. In Companion of the 2017 ACM Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work and Social Computing -CSCW '17 Companion, 431-436. https://doi.org/10.1145/3022198.3022666 source

In the paper

“there are also a number of concerns including deception, infantilization, and privacy [63,70].”

What the sources say

• ?Not checked — no full text of the sourcecites [63] 63. Alex Sciuto, Arnita Saini, Jodi Forlizzi, and Jason I. Hong. 2018. "Hey Alexa, What's Up?": A Mixed-Methods Studies of In-Home Conversational Agent Usage. In Proceedings of the 2018 Designing Interactive Systems Conference (DIS '18), 857-868. https://doi.org/10.1145/3196709.3196772 source
• ?Not checked — no full text of the sourcecites [70] 70. Alexandra Vtyurina and Adam Fourney. 2018. Exploring the Role of Conversational Cues in Guided Task Support with Virtual Assistants. In Proceedings of the 2018 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI '18), 208:1-208:7. https://doi.org/10.1145/3173574.3173782 source

In the paper

“And while some of our discussion specifically addresses use of voice assistants for older adults, many of our findings are interpreted with broader significance.”

In the paper

“The usage logs provided us with the actual interactions to complement participants' perceptions of these interactions.”

In the paper

“Given the ways that past theories [17,30] relate to and shed light on the behaviors of the population we study, our beliefs on the commonalities are confirmed.”

What the sources say

• ?Not checked — no full text of the sourcecites [17] 17. Nicholas Epley, Adam Waytz, and John T. Cacioppo. 2007. On seeing human: a three-factor theory of anthropomorphism. Psychological Review 114, 4: 864-886. https://doi.org/10.1037/0033-295X.114.4.864 source
• ?Not checked — no full text of the sourcecites [30] 30. Peter H. Kahn Jr., Aimee L. Reichert, Heather E. Gary, Takayuki Kanda, Hiroshi Ishiguro, Solace Shen, Jolina H. Ruckert, and Brian Gill. 2011. The New Ontological Category Hypothesis in Human-robot Interaction. In Proceedings of the 6th International Conference on Human-robot Interaction (HRI '11), 159-160. https://doi.org/10.1145/1957656.1957710 source

In the paper

“Humans anthropomorphize non-humans based on their anthropocentric knowledge.”

What the sources say

• ?Not checked — no full text of the sourcecites [17] 17. Nicholas Epley, Adam Waytz, and John T. Cacioppo. 2007. On seeing human: a three-factor theory of anthropomorphism. Psychological Review 114, 4: 864-886. https://doi.org/10.1037/0033-295X.114.4.864 source

In the paper

“Social motivation describes the desire for social contact or connection and social approval from other agents.”

What the sources say

• ?Not checked — no full text of the sourcecites [17] 17. Nicholas Epley, Adam Waytz, and John T. Cacioppo. 2007. On seeing human: a three-factor theory of anthropomorphism. Psychological Review 114, 4: 864-886. https://doi.org/10.1037/0033-295X.114.4.864 source

In the paper

“Although social media and social networking sites can foster social connections in general, studies have found that interfaces that merge digital and physical space may be more appealing to some older people [22,23].”

What the sources say

• ?Not checked — no full text of the sourcecites [22] 22. Alexis Hope, Ted Schwaba, and Anne Marie Piper. 2014. Understanding digital and material social communications for older adults. In Proceedings of the 32nd annual ACM conference on Human factors in computing systems -CHI '14, 3903-3912. https://doi.org/10.1145/2556288.2557133 source
• ?Not checked — no full text of the sourcecites [23] 23. Dominik Hornung, Claudia Müller, Irina Shklovski, Timo Jakobi, and Volker Wulf. 2017. Navigating Relationships and Boundaries: Concerns around ICT-uptake for Elderly People. In Proceedings of the 2017 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems -CHI '17, 7057-7069. https://doi.org/10.1145/3025453.3025859 source

In the paper

“Thus, we extend Kahn et al.'s theory to apply to voice assistants, identifying factors that influence shifts between ontological categorizations: the voice assistant capabilities (e.g., responsiveness), desire for personalization and companionship, sustained use over time, and location and moment of interaction with the voice assistant.”

In the paper

“To understand a particular phenomenon -how “politeness” appears in conversations with Alexa -we analyzed the usage logs, as we wanted to understand users' actual interactions in addition to their perceptions of these interactions.”

In the paper

“Past work has found that technology-mediated social interaction can be a form of at times unwelcome additional work for older adults as they feel that they must put in effort, be social and gracious while using such systems [43].”

What the sources say

• ?Not checked — no full text of the sourcecites [43] 43. Amanda Lazar, Christian Koehler, Joshua Tanenbaum, and David H. Nguyen. 2015. Why we use and abandon smart devices. In Proceedings of the 2015 ACM International Joint Conference on Pervasive and Ubiquitous Computing - UbiComp '15, 635-646. https://doi.org/10.1145/2750858.2804288 source