Backchannel Head Nods in Danish First Meeting Encounters with a Humanoid Robot: The Role of Physical Embodiment

Head nods have been shown to play an important role for communication management in human communication, e.g. as a non-verbal feedback signal from the listener. Based on a study with virtual agents, which showed that the use of head nods helps eliciting more verbal input from the user, we investigate the use of head nods in communications between a user and a humanoid robot (Nao) that they meet for the first time. Contrary to the virtual agent case, the robot elicited less talking from the user when it was using head nods as a feedback signal. A follow-up experiment revealed that the physical embodiment of the robot had a huge impact on the users’ behavior in the first encounters.

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