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Then BMW came to him with a touchy problem involving Rosetta stone software
the voice in the company's 5 Series of cars: They had to have a product recall, because male German drivers wouldn't take directions from a female voice, because it was a 'woman.'Nass' eyes still light up with wonder at the thought of drivers reacting to a synthetic female voice as if it were a real person. The title of his latest book explains why humans react in this way: We are Wired for Speech.Our brains are so tuned for speech, he said while sipping a cup of English tea in his home on campus. A newborn, at one day old, can distinguish speech from other sounds such as a dog barking. At four days old, babies can distinguish their language from other languages. Even the hairs in the ear at first react differently to speech than other sounds.So when humans get behind the wheel and listen to the car talk, Our brains react to this voice as a person. We basically have no choice.The gender stereotypes that tripped up BMW also have come through loud and clear in Nass' experiments, to his dismay. Volunteers are more likely to perceive a male voice as authoritative, even when male and female voices speak exactly the same words.After deciding that the new voice in the BMW should not be the car itself (as in the TV series Knight Rider), Nass and his colleagues considered other candidates a golf buddy, a chauffeur, a pilot (dominant and not very friendly) and Rosetta Stone Indian Levev 1-3
a person riding shotgun (talkative, not very smart) before settling on a co-pilot, who could take over when the driver was in trouble but who understood that the driver (the pilot) was in charge. The chosen voice was male, somewhat friendly, and competent. He was a hit.Today, Nass is still researching car voices and is the director of the Communication Between Humans and Interactive Media Lab in the Department of Communication, and the associate director of CarLab.Some of his observations Depressed drivers drive better when their car speaks as if it, too, were feeling down. If you're in a really bad mood, do you want a bouncy person around? Programming cars to speak in complex sentences may improve safety by forcing drivers to pay attention instead of zoning out. Older drivers prefer younger voices after all, everyone knows that an older voice can't see as well as a younger voice. Drivers feel more engaged with the computer voice if they believe the computer is installed in their car, as opposed to a wireless connection to a distant computer. As a result, they disclose more information to the in-car computer and drive faster. If the onboard computer adjusts the handling of the car to improve your less-than-perfect driving technique, should the computer tell you or keep the secret to itself? (Nass is still researching this one.)While the talking car could turn out to be a major invader of your privacy, Nass says that it (or he or she) might just as well be a boon to safety. If the car can keep you alert and calm, warn you of troubles ahead Rosetta Stone Greek Levev 1-3
(There is a pedestrian in the middle of the road) and offer you timely advice about traffic and directions, wouldn't that be great?Insurance companies and car manufacturers would jump at the low-cost, high-impact safety improvements. Right now, affecting driving performance in cars is expensive, Nass said. You can imagine how much it costs for anti-lock brakes. But what if you could simply change the voice in the car? Well, that would make change extremely cheap and effective. So that's what we're looking at.

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