A Virtual Conversational Agent for Teens with Autism: Experimental Results and Design Lessons

We present the design of an online social skills development interface for teenagers with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). The interface is intended to enable private conversation practice anywhere, anytime using a web-browser. Users converse informally with a virtual agent, receiving feedback on nonverbal cues in real-time, and summary feedback. The prototype was developed in consultation with an expert UX designer, two psychologists, and a pediatrician. Using the data from 47 individuals, feedback and dialogue generation were automated using a hidden Markov model and a schema-driven dialogue manager capable of handling multi-topic conversations. We conducted a study with nine high-functioning ASD teenagers. Through a thematic analysis of post-experiment interviews, identified several key design considerations, notably: 1) Users should be fully briefed at the outset about the purpose and limitations of the system, to avoid unrealistic expectations. 2) An interface should incorporate positive acknowledgment of behavior change. 3) Realistic appearance of a virtual agent and responsiveness are important in engaging users. 4) Conversation personalization, for instance in prompting laconic users for more input and reciprocal questions, would help the teenagers engage for longer terms and increase the system's utility

Affective interactions between expressive characters

When people meet in virtual worlds they are represented by computer animated characters that lack a variety of expression and can seem stiff and robotic. By comparison human bodies are highly expressive; a casual observation of a group of people mil reveals a large diversity of behavior, different postures, gestures and complex patterns of eye gaze. In order to make computer mediated communication between people more like real face-to-face communication, it is necessary to add an affective dimension. This paper presents Demeanour, an affective semi-autonomous system for the generation of realistic body language in avatars. Users control their avatars that in turn interact autonomously with other avatars to produce expressive behaviour. This allows people to have affectively rich interactions via their avatars

Pseudo-cleft constructions in Swedish talk-in-interaction : Turn projection and discourse organization

In this study we present an interactional linguistic analysis of pseudoclefts in Swedish based on audio and video recordings of everyday and institutional conversations, resulting in a collection of 100 instances. There is variation in the degree to which pseudo-cleft constructions are syntactically integrated: from fully integrated biclausal constructions (cleft clause + copula verb + main clause) to non-copular variants and further to variants in which the cleft-clause is followed by an indeterminate stretch of discourse. The construction's functional properties have to do with projecting actions and generating discourse events, e.g. showing that the initial part has an important turn-projecting function by disclosing the speaker's stance towards the issue at hand. Pseudo-cleft constructions are recurrently employed for marking discourse shifts, e.g. from a positive to a negative stance. Prosodic organization brings unity to the overall construction of clefts and visual cues can be used to convey significant processing activity by the speaker during the production of a pseudocleft. Our data from institutional interaction shows that pseudoclefts are heavily used by the expert rather than lay participant, thus contributing to the creation of institutional roles and social order. (c) 2021 The Author(s). Published by Elsevier B.V. This is an open access article under the CC BY license (http:// creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).Peer reviewe

Adaptors and the Turn-Taking Mechanism: The Distribution of Adaptors Relative to Turn Borders in Dyadic Conversation

Turn-taking – the coordinated and efficient transition between the roles of sender and receiver in communication – is a fundamental property of conversational interaction. The turn-taking mechanism depends on a variety of linguistic factors related to syntax, semantics and prosody, which have recently been subject to vigorous research. This contrasts with the relative lack of studies on the role of non-verbal visual signals and cues in effecting turn-transitions. In this paper, we consider the relation between this phenomenon and adaptors: a class of non-verbal behaviors prototypically involving touching one’s own body or manipulating external objects. We recorded 10 semi-scripted conversations between a total of 12 subjects and annotated the material for discrete adaptors and turn borders. We found that participants produced discrete adaptors significantly more frequently close to floor transfers (turn borders). Our result goes against the long-standing tradition of interpreting adaptors as unrelated to speech and, more generally, communicative interaction