Mental Workload and Language Production in Non-Native Speaker IPA Interaction

TL;DR

This study investigates how non-native English speakers experience higher mental workload during interactions with intelligent personal assistants, but show similar language production patterns compared to native speakers.

Contribution

It provides empirical evidence on mental workload differences and language production similarities between native and non-native speakers during IPA interactions.

Findings

L2 speakers experience higher mental workload.

No significant difference in language complexity or diversity.

Language production patterns are similar across groups.

Abstract

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.