A ROCKING chair that persuades elderly people to tell stories about their
childhood will help to preserve valuable oral history, according to Jennifer
Smith of MIT鈥檚 media lab. She developed the interactive rocking chair because
she regretted not having a way of recording all her grandmother鈥檚 family tales.
鈥淲hen she died we lost all her stories with her,鈥� Smith says.
In Smith鈥檚 system, the elderly person sits on a rocking chair in front of a
large screen displaying a life-size, graphic image of a little girl. She tells a
story of her own and then asks the person in the rocking chair questions about
their life.
In tests, Smith noticed that people鈥檚 rocking patterns tended to change when
they finished a story: 鈥淪ome people come to a stop, while others speed up,鈥� she
says. So an accelerometer on the back of the rocking chair monitors movement,
feeding information back to a computer that controls what the little girl says
and when she says it. 鈥淚 felt she could tell when I didn鈥檛 want to talk and it
was time to ask another question,鈥� says Laurie Eberhardt, a grandmother from
South Hadley, Massachusetts, who tested the system.
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Pressure sensors in the seat of the rocking chair also monitor body movements
so that the little girl can be made to lean forwards or backwards, mirroring the
body language of the storyteller. The computer also uses a voice recognition
system to decipher the storytelling and the child reacts happily, sadly or in a
surprised way to the use of any of 50 keywords.
Smith鈥檚 is the first conversational system to combine word recognition with
an algorithm that also recognises intonation: so the little girl nods, or makes
an appropriate sound, such as 鈥渦h-huh鈥� or 鈥渉mmm鈥�, at the right time. 鈥淏efore I
did that, people would stop talking and say, 鈥業 don鈥檛 think it鈥檚 listening,'鈥�
says Smith.
She has found that people tell longer and more detailed stories while sitting
in the interactive rocking chair than they do when talking to a tape recorder
with a list of questions in front of them. 鈥淚t鈥檚 a more sympathetic listener,鈥�
says Justine Cassell at MIT鈥檚 media lab, who is developing the system for use
with children. As for preserving family stories: 鈥淚t鈥檚 not the same as having
your grandchild on your lap,鈥� says Eberhardt, 鈥渂ut at least she didn鈥檛 get
distracted and run away.鈥�