Alina Sue Larson

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About

Alina Sue Larson is a researcher at the intersection of human-computer interaction, linguistics, and social robotics, whose work explores how subtle features of speech shape our perception of machine agents. Her most cited paper, "Framing, more than speech, affects how machine agents are perceived" (2023, 3 citations), investigates how discourse markers like "oh" and "you know," as well as fillers such as "uh" and "um," influence listener judgments of trustworthiness, friendliness, intelligence, and nervousness—comparing dialogues and monologues. Crucially, Larson finds that the conceptual framing of a voice as human or machine often outweighs the actual speech phenomena in shaping perception. This work contributes to a growing understanding of how design choices in voice interfaces can inadvertently bias user trust and social attributions. While early in her career, Larson’s research has immediate implications for developers of conversational AI, virtual assistants, and social robots, highlighting that how we label an agent’s voice matters as much as what it says. Her findings challenge assumptions about naturalistic speech in machines and open new questions about the ethics of voice design.