Embodied conversational agents: Effects on memory performance and anthropomorphisation

It is often assumed that the use of Embodied Conversational Agents (ECAs) in human-computer interfaces improves human-computer interaction. Because of their appearance and because they show human-like communicative behaviour, users tend to ascribe human characteristics to ECAs or 'anthropo-morphize' them. Since interacting with another human being comes natural to people, anthropomorphisation of agents in an interface is thought to improve the process of communication. As a result, other usability aspects, such as satisfaction and learnability, would probably benefit. This paper describes a study into anthropomorphisation of ECAs and their effect on memory performance. The results of our study show that the presence of an ECA has a positive effect on retainability of information, but that this effect is not necessarily influenced by anthropomorphism.