Conversational Agents as Historical Figures: Computerized Textual Analysis of the Conversational Record.
Abstract: The conversational record of 39 students who chatted with Freudbot, a conversational agent in Second Life was compared with 84 students who chatted with the same agent under one of three different visual conditions using computerized textual analysis. The results indicated that students in the virtual world of Second Life used fewer Freud related terms in their conversations than did students in the other conditions. The condition with the highest percent of Freud terms involved an animated version of the agent. These findings are discussed in relation to the conversational constraints associated with the different environments.
Presider: Sevinj Iskandarova, James Madison University