Robot-directed speech as a means of exploring conceptualizations of robots

Decades of research have shown that speakers adapt the way in which they speak to meet the needs of listeners, and that speech modifications can illuminate speakers´ conceptualizations of their listeners´ cognitive and communicative abilities. The present study extends this line of research into human-robot communication by analyzing the linguistic features of commands given to a robotic dog. The results indicate that males and females differed in the way in which they spoke to the robot, suggesting that there was not a uniform expectation of the robot´s communicative capacities.