An interactive response strategy involving a robot avatar in a video conference system for reducing the stress of response time management in communication

Abstract

People with response time (RT) management issues usually have high situational communication apprehension, and fear of negative evaluation (FNE) in face-to-face (FtF) and online interactions. Decreasing the stress related to RT management can reduce situational communication apprehension and FNE, ensuring communication successful. In this study, we propose an interactive response strategy involving a robot avatar in a video conference that can reduce the stress related to RT management in a person and making communication successful. Two types of robotic video conferencing systems (VCSs) were considered: 1) a conventional robotic video conferencing system (VCS) where interactive response of robot avatar does not change concerning variation in RT of the subject and 2) a robotic VCS where interactive response of robot avatar changes concerning variation in RT of the subject. Situational communication apprehension measure (SCAM), FNE, sense of being attending (SoBA), and intention to use (ITU) are used as indexes for noticing the decrease in stress related to RT management of a subject in a communication scenario. A total of 51 subjects (M = 33.20, SD = 7.58 years) participated in the subjective evaluation of the web-based survey. The proposed interactive response of a robot avatar was found to have a significant effect on the stress related to RT management in a person. A significant decrease in expected SCAM and FNE scores of subjects was observed. Furthermore, a significant increase in expected SoBA and ITU scores of subjects was also observed. This study contributes to the literature in terms of the impact of the proposed interactive response of the robotic avatar on the stress related to RT management in a person in the video conference, assessed by SCAM, FNE, SoBA, and ITU indexes.