The Effect of First- and Third-person POVs on Different Cultural Communication: How Japanese People Understand Social Conversation at Thai Night Flea Markets

Social and communication in culturally different condition is a challenging topic because people from many countries have to live, and communicate together with their own background that affects different perception. Herein, we create a cultural agent in an assistance system that can help people learn conversational and improve communication skills. Interaction with cultural agent from first-and third-person points of view (POVs) is novel method for human agent communication. This experiment was conducted with Japanese, who were asked to observe customer agents and interact with shopkeeper avatar at Thai night market. The behavior of the agent and avatar were designed based on the Hofstede cultural dimension (Thai cultural values). A significant different result showed that most Japanese participants in the third-person POV group understood the Thai culture IDV from our simulation better than those in the first-person POV group. Furthermore, participants from both first-and third-person POV groups gave a similar score for Thai culture in the MAS and UAI.