Hi my name is Jinping Wang.
I'm a PhD student from College of Communications
at Penn State.
In this video I'm going to present the work
I did with my colleagues on how to leverage
smart speakers to reduce public speaking anxiety.
Most of us have experience with public
speaking anxiety in our daily lives.
In fact, it is the most common social phobia.
For example, in the United States it is estimated
that 15% to 30% of people have some kinds
of public speaking anxiety.
One of the most common suggestions we receive
is to practice, practice, and practice.
Indeed, it would be ideal that we can have coaches
to provide us with proper training
that can effectively reduce our anxiety.
Unfortunately, not many of us have
access to those services.
Then how can we solve the problem
with current technologies?
Conversational agents provide such a possibility,
since they have become increasingly popular
in our households now and they have growing abilities
to mimic human-human communication.
Therefore, can we use smart speakers to
deliver practices that help us manage our
public speaking anxiety?
The question is what kinds of
conversational agents do we need in this context.
One of the key capabilities that
conversational agents should have is sociability.
In other words, the agent needs to know
when to take turns and how to respond
in a socially appropriate manner.
Previous research has shown that high social ability
can lead users to perceive themselves having a closer
relationship with the agent, which may lead them to
accept the agent as a conversational partner.
However, on the other hand, a higher level
of sociability may also have its drawbacks.
Sociability is a human-like attribute.
For people who are suffering from social phobia,
high sociability of the partner can
bring pressure and trigger anxiety.
The key may lie in their
fear of being judged or evaluated,
leading to negative outcomes.
Therefore, our second research question is,
Does high sociability increase or decrease
a user's speech anxiety?
To answer these questions,
we conducted an experimental study.
We recruited 53 students who were enrolled
in public speaking classes and who reported
being afraid of public speaking.
Participants were invited to a computer lab.
We first asked them to have an interaction with Alexa.
During the interaction, Alexa followed designed scripts,
which included a greeting section,
an introduction to the training section,
a coaching section and an ending section.
Participants experienced the same procedure
in the high social and low social conditions.
However, a highly sociable Alexa
did an additional self-introduction when greeting users;
they used more empathetic expressions such as
"I understand how you're feeling now”
or "I know how it feels"
and they are more likely to use conversational fillers
such as "well", "let me see" in their conversations.
Specifically, in the coaching section,
we implemented a technique called
cognitive reconstructing
to help participants reduce their anxiety.
The idea of cognitive reconstructing is to help people
identify their negative statements about public speaking
and replace negative statements with
more positive coping statements.
For example, when participants were
anticipating a speech,
they might have negative thoughts
say, "what I say will probably sound stupid"
Alexa would then teach participants to
substitute that thought with a coping statement,
"there is nothing to lose, it is worth a try".
After the interaction with Alexa, participants were asked
to deliver a 1-minute speech on a designed topic.
We used a VR device to simulate
a public speaking environment.
Before participants delivered their speech,
they were asked to report their levels of
anxiety on a 0 to 100 scale.
After participants finished their speech,
they were then instructed to answer a questionnaire,
in which they reported their post speech anxiety,
the perceptions of the agent, their user experience,
and a few individual differences.
Let’s look at what we found.
Our results showed that
our manipulation of sociability was successful.
Participants who interacted with a highly
sociable Alexa perceived the agent to be more sociable
than participants who interacted
with a less social Alexa.
However, this difference in sociability
did not affect users’ speech anxiety.
We also explored the psychological mechanisms
between the agent’s sociability
and user’s speech anxiety.
We found that increased sociability
promoted perceived interpersonal closeness.
In other words, users perceived themselves
having more intimate and closer interactions
with the agent,
which further reduced their public speaking anxiety.
Contrary to our hypothesis, high sociability
did not affect participants’ fear of being judged,
although fear of being judged was
positively related to their speech anxiety.
Regarding user experience, it turns out that
participants in the two conditions did not differ
in their perceptions about the usefulness,
ease-of-use, and fun of use of the practice.
However, participants who interacted with
the more sociable Alexa were more satisfied
with the interaction,
and more willingly to use the service again.
We also collected qualitative feedback from our participants.
Results showed that participants perceived
Alexa being effective in helping them overcome
their anxiety and helping them organize their thoughts.
In addition, several participants mentioned that
they can practice talking without being judged.
In terms of weaknesses,
participants complained that Alexa responded to them
like robots
and it was not able to provide them
with personalized feedback.
Also, because of Amazon’s setting,
Alexa would automatically shut off
when a user gave a long response
or silenced for a long time,
resulting in a less smooth interaction.
Finally, some participants mentioned that
the voice interaction
made the information difficult to remember.
So, what do these results mean?
Let’s go back to our question at the beginning.
Can we use smart speakers to
deliver public speaking trainings?
In our study, we do see signs of effectiveness
of Alexa being a public speaking coach,
given that several participants mentioned
they felt assured, comforted
and their confidence were boosted
after interacting with Alexa.
In addition, Alexa’ sociability did not
affect speech anxiety directly.
Instead, building interpersonal closeness was the key.
That is, if the conversation made the user
feel the agent warm and close,
it would lead to less anxiety.
Moreover, high sociability was more likely
to offer users a better interaction experience.
These findings have implications for future research
and practical designs on conversational agents.
First of all, one of our major contributions is
a successful integration of cognitive reconstructing
exercise in our practice.
For future studies using conversational agents
for social anxiety treatment, they can consider
using this technique to reduce anxiety,
which can be applied to contexts
beyond public speaking.
In addition, we showed the promise of providing
such practice to the targeted population
in a more accessible way,
considering the popularity of smart speakers
is still growing.
In addition, our study also has implications
for research about sociability of conversational agents.
We showed several effective approaches
to increase the sociability of an agent,
such as using more empathetic expressions
and conversational fillers.
However, when designing a conversational agent
for social anxiety treatment,
sociability can be a double-edged sword.
It may increase relationship closeness,
but it may also trigger extra social pressure
when socially anxious users are extremely sensitive.
Therefore, designers should strive to explore ways
to maintain a good balance.
Finally, our study has suggestions for the
future design of conversational agents.
Our participant demanded more effective
and natural conversations.
This may be realized by better turn-taking recognitions
and increased contingency of conversation.
In addition, for practices and training in the
educational context, we suggest designers
incorporating visual information presentation.
In this way, not only can users enjoy easy interactions,
but they can also get a chance
to note down and memorize their takeaways.
Thank you for watching this video.
Please feel free to contact us if you have any questions!