Mental Workload and Language Production in Non-Native Speaker IPA Interaction
This addresses the problem of increased cognitive load for non-native users of speech-based assistants, though it is incremental as it confirms workload differences without novel solutions.
The study investigated mental workload and language production in non-native speakers interacting with intelligent personal assistants, finding significantly higher mental workload for non-native speakers but no significant differences in language production metrics like turns or lexical complexity.
Through proliferation on smartphones and smart speakers, intelligent personal assistants (IPAs) have made speech a common interaction modality. Yet, due to linguistic coverage and varying levels of functionality, many speakers engage with IPAs using a non-native language. This may impact the mental workload and pattern of language production displayed by non-native speakers. We present a mixed-design experiment, wherein native (L1) and non-native (L2) English speakers completed tasks with IPAs through smartphones and smart speakers. We found significantly higher mental workload for L2 speakers during IPA interactions. Contrary to our hypotheses, we found no significant differences between L1 and L2 speakers in terms of number of turns, lexical complexity, diversity, or lexical adaptation when encountering errors. These findings are discussed in relation to language production and processing load increases for L2 speakers in IPA interaction.