Ashley Keaton

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About

Ashley Keaton’s research sits at the intersection of human-computer interaction, psycholinguistics, and social robotics, exploring how people unconsciously adapt their speech when interacting with technology. Her most-cited work, “Vocal accommodation to technology: the role of physical form” (2023, 12 citations), reveals a fascinating phenomenon: speakers subtly align their vocal patterns to text-to-speech voices, with the degree of accommodation influenced by the device’s physical embodiment—from a disembodied speaker to a humanoid robot. This finding challenges assumptions about human-machine communication, suggesting that even minimal physical form triggers social-linguistic behaviors once thought exclusive to human interaction. Keaton’s broader contributions include pioneering methods to measure phonetic convergence in real-time, bridging gaps between sociolinguistics and engineering. Her work has implications for designing more intuitive voice interfaces and understanding how robots might shape human speech norms. As a rising scholar, Keaton’s research offers a compelling lens on how technology reshapes the most fundamental of human behaviors: the way we speak.