The Effect of Visual Gender on Abuse in Conversation with ECAs

Summary, in English

Previous studies have shown that female ECAs are more likely to be abused than male agents, which may cement gender stereotypes. In the study reported in this paper a visually androgynous ECA in the form of a teachable agent in an educational math game was compared with a female and male agent. The re-sults confirm that female agents are more prone to be verbally abused than male agents, but also show that the visually androgynous agent was less abused than the female although more than the male agent. A surprising finding was that very few students asked the visually androgynous agent whether it was a boy or a girl. These results suggest that androgyny may be a way to keep both genders represented, which is especially important in pedagogical settings, simultaneously lowering the abusive behavior and perhaps most important, loosen the connection between gender and abuse.

• Författare: Annika Silvervarg; Kristin Raukola; Magnus Haake; Agneta Gulz
• Redaktör: Yukiko Nakano; Michael Neff; Ana Paiva; Marilyn A. Walker
• Avdelning/ar: Kognitionsvetenskap
• Publiceringsår: 2012
• Språk: Engelska
• Sidor: 153-160
• Publikation/Tidskrift/Serie: Lecture Notes in Computer Science
• Volym: 7502
• Issue: IVA 2012
• Dokumenttyp: Konferensbidrag
• Förlag: Springer
• Ämne: Learning
• Nyckelord: embodied conversational agent; conversational pedagogical agent; teachable agent; off-task interaction; social conversation; visual aspects; visual gender; abuse
• Conference name: Intelligent Virtual Agents
• Conference date: 2012-09-12 - 2012-09-14
• Conference place: Santa Cruz, CA, United States
• Status: Published
• Forskningsgrupp: Lund University Cognitive Science (LUCS)
• ISBN/ISSN/Övrigt: ISBN: 978-3-642-33196-1