Similarity Attraction for Robot's Dialect in Language Learning Using Social Robots

Abstract

The gradual transition towards the Kazakh language in the Republic of Kazakhstan raises the emergence of applying new technologies for learning the language. Considering the fact that the Kazakh language has dialectal forms, it is important to investigate how these language features would affect the interaction with the synthesized speech of a robot or a computer program. This paper presents a preliminary study exploring the effect of dialectal language on the human-robot interaction in an education-oriented environment. Participants were involved in the interaction with two different robots with pre-programmed language dialectal patterns - South and non-South, to learn new vocabulary. Findings show that there is a low significance in correlation, however, it is suggested that a small sample size led to the obtained results.