Effects of Automated Transcription Delay on Non-native Speakers' Comprehension in Real-Time Computer-Mediated Communication

Real-time transcription generated by automated speech recognition (ASR) technologies with a reasonably high accuracy has been demonstrated to be valuable in facilitating non-native speakers’ comprehension in real-time communication. Besides errors, time delay often exists due to technical problems in automated transcription as well. This study focuses on how the time delay of transcription impacts non-native speakers’ comprehension performance and user experience. The experiment design simulated a one-way computer-mediated communication scenario, where comprehension performance and user experiences in 3 transcription conditions (no transcript; perfect transcripts with a 2-second delay; and transcripts with a 10% worderror-rate and a 2-second delay) were compared. The results showed that the participants can benefit from the transcription with a 2-second time delay, as their comprehension performance in this condition was improved compared with the no-transcript condition. However, the transcription presented with delay was found to have negative effects on user experience. In the final part of the paper, implications for further system development and design are discussed.