Abstract
This study was designed to examine natural free form communication that exists when a person interacts with robots versus live entities. Participants interacted with one of four entities: an AIBO robotic dog, Legobot, dog or cat. The amount of words spoken by the participant while interacting with the entity was recorded and coded for word count, average word length, number of questions and number of commands. It was found that participants spoke to the AIBO similarly to how they spoke to the cat and they did not speak to the AIBO as they spoke to the dog. This suggests that when speaking to an entity people are not distinguishing between organic and inorganic, and that when a robotic entity resembles a dog, it does not mean that people will behave toward it as they would toward a real dog.
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