Non-Native Speaker Generation and Perception for Mixed-Cultural Settings

Abstract

This paper presents an experiment evaluating the effects of virtual agents' language proficiency on whether they are perceived as a native speakers or not. Our first results indicate that beyond 10% word order mistakes and 25% infinitive mistakes, virtual agents are perceived as non-native speakers, even though their appearance and non-verbal behaviour were not altered. We believe these thresholds constitute interesting guidelines possibly simplifying the design of non-native speaker simulations.