Our late-breaking work, Disfluencies in robot- and human-directed narration: Preliminary findings on partner effects and temperamental shyness, by Nils F. Tolksdorf and Adriana Hanulíková, has been accepted for presentation at IEEE RO-MAN 2026 in Kitakyushu, Japan.
The study examines how adults narrate stories to a social robot compared with a human partner, focusing on filled and unfilled pauses, temperamental shyness, and multilingual backgrounds. The preliminary findings suggest that robot-directed speech may differ from human-directed speech in pause type, highlighting the importance of considering individual differences when designing social robots for diverse users.