Voici les éléments 1 - 10 sur 13
  • Publication
    Accès libre
    The rise of intelligent technologies and social media : implications for human-technology relationships
    (Neuchâtel : Université de Neuchâtel, 2023-09-19) ;
    Cette thèse explore les dynamiques évolutives des relations humains-technologie à travers trois articles distincts, mettant l'accent sur les implications des technologies intelligentes et des médias sociaux. Le premier article évalue de manière critique l'anthropomorphisme dans l'IA, en explorant sa conceptualisation théorique et son application dans des domaines tels que l'informatique, la robotique, la psychologie et le marketing. Malgré l'utilisation généralisée de caractéristiques humanisées dans les technologies, une compréhension globale de l'anthropomorphisme dans l'IA fait défaut. Pour pallier cela, cet article propose un cadre conceptuel et recommande les meilleures pratiques pour les recherches futures, en particulier dans le domaine du marketing et du comportement du consommateur. Le deuxième article adopte une perspective relationnelle pour analyser les impacts des assistants IA anthropomorphiques, tels qu'Alexa, sur les consommateurs. Les résultats des enquêtes et des expérimentations de terrain révèlent que si l'anthropomorphisme de l'IA peut enrichir l'expérience utilisateur, il peut également susciter des menaces à l'identité humaine, renforcer les préoccupations liées à la confidentialité des données et diminuer le bien-être. Cependant, la recherche dévoile également trois interventions pratiques pour atténuer ces effets indésirables. Le troisième article contemple les changements sociétaux induits par les réseaux sociaux. Il souligne que ces plateformes amplifient les valeurs individuelles de l’accomplissement et de la conformité. Cette affirmation est soutenue par une analyse de données secondaires, d'enquêtes consommateurs approfondies et d'expériences. De manière générale, cette thèse vise à éclairer les complexités des relations consommateur-technologie et leurs implications.
    ABSTRACT:
    This dissertation explores the evolving dynamics of human-technology relationships, emphasizing the implications of intelligent technologies and social media. The dissertation encompasses three distinct articles. The first article critically evaluates anthropomorphism in AI, exploring its theoretical conceptualization and application across fields like computer science, robotics, psychology, and marketing. Despite the widespread use of humanlike features in technologies, a comprehensive understanding of anthropomorphism in AI is lacking. As a remedy, this piece offers a conceptual framework and recommends best practices for future exploration, particularly in marketing and consumer behavior. The second article adopts a relationship-centric lens to analyze the impacts of anthropomorphic AI assistants, such as Alexa, on consumers. Findings from surveys and field experiments reveal that while AI anthropomorphism can enrich the user experience, it can also elicit identity threats for the users, intensify data privacy concerns, and diminish overall well-being. However, this research also unveils three practical interventions to mitigate these adverse outcomes. The third article contemplates the profound societal shifts induced by social media. It underscores that platforms like these amplify individual values of achievement and conformity. This assertion is backed by an analysis of a large set of secondary data, a consumer survey, and an experiment. In essence, this dissertation seeks to illuminate the complexities of consumer-technology relationships and their implications.
  • Publication
    Accès libre
    Trojan Horse or Useful Helper? A Relationship Perspective on Artificial Intelligence Assistants with Humanlike Features
    (2022-3-22) ;
    Alavi, Sascha
    ;
    Artificial intelligence assistants (AIAs) such as Alexa are prevalent in consumers’ homes. Owing to their powerful artificial intelligence, consumers may perceive that AIAs have a mind of their own, that is, they anthropomorphize them. Past marketing research points to beneficial effects of AIA anthropomorphism for consumers and companies, while potential harmful effects have not been empirically explored. In examining both beneficial and harmful effects, this paper adopts a relationship perspective. Indeed, consumers spend large amounts of time with their AIAs, potentially developing a relationship over time that builds on an exchange of benefits and (psychological) costs. A preliminary survey and user interviews, a field study and a field experiment with AIA users show that AIA anthropomorphism may threaten users’ identity, which disempowers them, creates data privacy concerns and ultimately undermines their well-being. These harmful effects particularly emerge in close, long relationships. The field experiment uncovers three empowering interventions which attenuate harmful effects of AIA anthropomorphism in relationships with consumers. With AI-powered technologies taking larger roles in our daily lives, our research highlights key future directions to investigate the permanent ongoing nature of the consumer–AI relationships.
  • Publication
    Accès libre
    Trojan Horse or Useful Helper? A Relationship Perspective on Artificial Intelligence Assistants with Humanlike Features
    (2022-2-18) ;
    Alavi, Sascha
    ;
    Artificial intelligence assistants (AIAs) such as Alexa are prevalent in consumers’ home. Due to their powerful artificial intelligence, consumers may perceive that AIAs have a mind of their own, that is, they are anthropomorphizing them. Past marketing research points to beneficial effects of AIA anthropomorphism for consumers and companies, while potential harmful effects are less explored. To examine both beneficial and costly effects, the paper adopts a relationship perspective. Indeed, consumers spend large amounts of time with their AIA, potentially developing a relationship over time that builds on an exchange of benefits and (psychological) costs. A field study and a field experiment with AIA users show that AIA anthropomorphism may threaten users’ identity, which disempowers them, creates data privacy concerns and ultimately undermines their well-being. These harmful effects particularly emerge in close, long relationships. The field experiment uncovers three empowering interventions, which attenuate harmful effects of AIA anthropomorphism in relationships with consumers.
  • Publication
    Accès libre
    European Portuguese-Learning Infants Look Longer at Iambic Stress: New Data on Language Specificity in Early Stress Perception
    (2020-8-28)
    Frota, Sónia
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    Butler, Joseph
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    Severino, Cátia
    ;
    Vigário, Marina
    The ability to perceive lexical stress patterns has been shown to develop in language-specific ways. However, previous studies have examined this ability in languages that are either clearly stress-based (favoring the development of a preference for trochaic stress, like English and German) or syllable-based (favoring the development of no stress preferences, like French, Spanish, and Catalan) and/or where the frequency distributions of stress patterns provide clear data for a predominant pattern (like English and Hebrew). European Portuguese (EP) is a different type of language, which presents conflicting sets of cues related to rhythm, frequency, and stress correlates that challenge existing accounts of early stress perception. Using an anticipatory eye movement (AEM) paradigm implemented with eye-tracking, EP-learning infants at 5–6 months demonstrated sensitivity to the trochaic/iambic stress contrast, with evidence of asymmetrical perception or preference for iambic stress. These results are not predicted by the rhythmic account of developing stress perception, and suggest that the language-particular phonological patterns impacting the frequency of trochaic and iambic stress, beyond lexical words with two or more syllables, together with the prosodic correlates of stress, drive the early acquisition of lexical stress. Our findings provide the first evidence of sensitivity to stress patterns in the presence of segmental variability by 5–6 months, and highlight the importance of testing developing stress perception in languages with diverse combinations of rhythmic, phonological, and phonetic properties.
  • Publication
    Accès libre
    Facing Alexa, the powerful lower their guard: anthropomorphization of smart personal assistants decreases privacy concerns for people with high sense of power
    (2020-5-26) ; ;
    Alavi, Sascha
    With rapidly increasing popularity, Smart Personal Assistants (SPA) are becoming prominent characters in our daily lives. Their ubiquity raises concern for data privacy as SPAs may be listening to our most intimate conversations at home. Due to their salient human-like features (e.g., human voice, name) we are inclined to anthropomorphize them. We investigated the influence of anthropomorphization of SPAs on consumer’s privacy concerns and the moderating role of sense of power in this relationship. People with high (low) power exhibited lower (higher) levels of privacy concerns when the perceived anthropomorphization was higher. We suggest that high power increases the perceived control and this illusion of control decreases privacy concerns. We extend this result by showing that lower privacy concerns lead to a greater frequency of use. Finally, we discuss the importance of understanding power in relation to increasingly human-like technologies and ramifications for consumer protection.
  • Publication
    Accès libre
    Infant Perception of Prosodic Boundaries Without the Pause Cue: An Eye-Tracking Study
    (2019-8-5)
    Frota, Sónia
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    Butler, Joseph
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    Severino, Cátia
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    ;
    Vigário, Marina
    Prosodic boundaries play a crucial role in signaling speech chunking, and may thus facilitate language learning. Previous studies have shown that infants are sensitive to prosodic boundaries and use them to segment speech. As prosodic boundary cues vary across languages, infants’ sensitivity to prosodic boundaries may also vary. The present study explores the perception of prosodic boundaries without the pause cue in European Portuguese 9- month-old infants. Using a familiarization procedure with visual fixation implemented with eye-tracking, infants were presented with sequences of delexicalized utterances with and without a prosodic boundary while watching a video with a randomly moving pattern. Successful discrimination was found, demonstrating that the pause is not a necessary cue by 9 months in line with the languagespecific adult pattern. Potential relations of discrimination abilities with later language outcomes are examined, and implications of our findings for crosslinguistic variation in the development of prosodic boundary perception are discussed.
  • Publication
    Accès libre
    Some Complex Concepts Require Language: An eye- tracking study with 12- to 24-mo-old infants and adults
    (2018-3-24) ;
    Choi, Mihye
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    de Villiers, Jill
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    Shukla, Mohinish
    What is the relation between language and thought? The possibilities range from these being completely separate cognitive systems, to them being two sides of the same cognitive coin. One specific proposal (De Villiers, 2014) suggests and provides empirical evidence for the idea that language might particularly be required for building complex conceptual representations. For example, the thought “dogs push cars” not only represents a specific asymmetric relation between a dog and a car, but does so across all instances of any dog pushing any car. In this study, we examine the building of such abstract, three-term transitive events (e.g., dog-pushes-car) in 12- to 24-mo-olds (n=26) and in adults (n=20). In separate groups of infants (n=20) and adults(n=25), we compare these to two-term, intransitive events (e.g., dog-jumps) using visually comparable stimuli. Adult participants were further divided into two groups: a group that underwent simultaneous verbal shadowing to restrict language use and a control group without verbal shadowing. We used an eye-tracker and an anticipatory looking paradigm to examine the development of an abstract representation, as measured by anticipatory looks towards target events (e.g., a dog pushing a car) versus role-reversed events (a car pushing a dog), with novel cars, dogs, and their combinations. For the intransitive events, we found significant anticipations towards targets vs. non-targets in both infants and verbal-shadowing adults. For transitive events, only control adults showed significant target anticipations. We suggest that representing three-term transitive events may be at a level of complexity that cannot be accomplished without language.
  • Publication
    Accès libre
    Listening natively across perceptual domains?
    (2016-1-28)
    Langus, Alan
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    Seyed-Allaei, Shima
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    Pirmoradian, Sahar
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    Marino, Caterina
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    Asaadi, Sina
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    Eren, Ömer
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    Toro, Juan
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    Peña, Marcela
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    Bion, Ricardo
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    Nespor, Marina
    Our native tongue influences the way we perceive other languages. But does it also determine the way we perceive nonlinguistic sounds? The authors investigated how speakers of Italian, Turkish, and Persian group sequences of syllables, tones, or visual shapes alternating in either frequency or duration. We found strong native listening effects with linguistic stimuli. Speakers of Italian grouped the linguistic stimuli differently from speakers of Turkish and Persian. However, speakers of all languages showed the same perceptual biases when grouping the nonlinguistic auditory and the visual stimuli. The shared perceptual biases appear to be determined by universal grouping principles, and the linguistic differences caused by prosodic differences between the languages. Although previous findings suggest that acquired linguistic knowledge can either enhance or diminish the perception of both linguistic and nonlinguistic auditory stimuli, we found no transfer of native listening effects across auditory domains or perceptual modalities.
  • Publication
    Accès libre
    European Portuguese-learning infants’ early perception of lexical stress
    (2015-7-20)
    Butler, Joseph
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    Cortês, Simão
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    Correia, Susana
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    Vigário, Marina
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    Frota, Sónia