Do (and say) as I say: Linguistic adaptation in human-computer dialogs

© Theodora Koulouri, Stanislao Lauria, and Robert D. Macredie. This article has been made available through the Brunel Open Access Publishing Fund.There is strong research evidence showing that people naturally align to each other’s vocabulary, sentence structure, and acoustic features in dialog, yet little is known about how the alignment mechanism operates in the interaction between users and computer systems let alone how it may be exploited to improve the efficiency of the interaction. This article provides an account of lexical alignment in human–computer dialogs, based on empirical data collected in a simulated human–computer interaction scenario. The results indicate that alignment is present, resulting in the gradual reduction and stabilization of the vocabulary-in-use, and that it is also reciprocal. Further, the results suggest that when system and user errors occur, the development of alignment is temporarily disrupted and users tend to introduce novel words to the dialog. The results also indicate that alignment in human–computer interaction may have a strong strategic component and is used as a resource to compensate for less optimal (visually impoverished) interaction conditions. Moreover, lower alignment is associated with less successful interaction, as measured by user perceptions. The article distills the results of the study into design recommendations for human–computer dialog systems and uses them to outline a model of dialog management that supports and exploits alignment through mechanisms for in-use adaptation of the system’s grammar and lexicon

Survey on Evaluation Methods for Dialogue Systems

In this paper we survey the methods and concepts developed for the evaluation of dialogue systems. Evaluation is a crucial part during the development process. Often, dialogue systems are evaluated by means of human evaluations and questionnaires. However, this tends to be very cost and time intensive. Thus, much work has been put into finding methods, which allow to reduce the involvement of human labour. In this survey, we present the main concepts and methods. For this, we differentiate between the various classes of dialogue systems (task-oriented dialogue systems, conversational dialogue systems, and question-answering dialogue systems). We cover each class by introducing the main technologies developed for the dialogue systems and then by presenting the evaluation methods regarding this class

Robust Processing of Natural Language

Previous approaches to robustness in natural language processing usually treat deviant input by relaxing grammatical constraints whenever a successful analysis cannot be provided by ``normal'' means. This schema implies, that error detection always comes prior to error handling, a behaviour which hardly can compete with its human model, where many erroneous situations are treated without even noticing them. The paper analyses the necessary preconditions for achieving a higher degree of robustness in natural language processing and suggests a quite different approach based on a procedure for structural disambiguation. It not only offers the possibility to cope with robustness issues in a more natural way but eventually might be suited to accommodate quite different aspects of robust behaviour within a single framework.Comment: 16 pages, LaTeX, uses pstricks.sty, pstricks.tex, pstricks.pro, pst-node.sty, pst-node.tex, pst-node.pro. To appear in: Proc. KI-95, 19th German Conference on Artificial Intelligence, Bielefeld (Germany), Lecture Notes in Computer Science, Springer 199

A conceptual architecture for interactive educational multimedia

Learning is more than knowledge acquisition; it often involves the active participation of the learner in a variety of knowledge- and skills-based learning and training activities. Interactive multimedia technology can support the variety of interaction channels and languages required to facilitate interactive learning and teaching. A conceptual architecture for interactive educational multimedia can support the development of such multimedia systems. Such an architecture needs to embed multimedia technology into a coherent educational context. A framework based on an integrated interaction model is needed to capture learning and training activities in an online setting from an educational perspective, to describe them in the human-computer context, and to integrate them with mechanisms and principles of multimedia interaction

A system design for human factors studies of speech-enabled Web browsing

This paper describes the design of a system which will subsequently be used as the basis of a range of empirical studies aimed at discovering how best to harness speech recognition capabilities in multimodal multimedia computing. Initial work focuses on speech-enabled browsing of the World Wide Web, which was never designed for such use. System design is complete, and is being evaluated via usability testing

Towards Multi-Modal Interactions in Virtual Environments: A Case Study

We present research on visualization and interaction in a realistic model of an existing theatre. This existing ‘Muziek¬centrum’ offers its visitors information about performances by means of a yearly brochure. In addition, it is possible to get information at an information desk in the theatre (during office hours), to get information by phone (by talking to a human or by using IVR). The database of the theater holds the information that is available at the beginning of the ‘theatre season’. Our aim is to make this information more accessible by using multi-modal accessible multi-media web pages. A more general aim is to do research in the area of web-based services, in particu¬lar interactions in virtual environments