Similarity in action with an Embodied Conversational Agent; can synchronous speech yield higher levels of rapport? An exploratory eHealth study

Self-guided eHealth has the benefit of providing autonomy to patients. However, the autonomy comes with a cost; elevated attrition rates. Embodied Conversational Agents (‘robots on screen’), have technological capabilities to build rapport with eHealth users and to support them, but are costly to realize and their evidence is inconclusive. We investigated a novel and low-technological method to build rapport. eHealth users synchronized their speech with a monologue-style ECA, a method for which there exists evidence within the human-to-human communication domain. User experiences were investigated using predominantly qualitative methods. As our study results show, users are fairly positive about speaking synchronously with the ECA. However, the experimental task needs refinements. Users need to priorly hear, at least once, the pace of their artificial interlocutor in order to synchronize. Future studies can further examine the refined synchronous speech task and its potential for more widely accessible rapport-building ECA’s aiming for eHealth adherence.