Beyond ‘Interaction’: How to Understand Social Effects on Social Cognition

In recent years, a number of philosophers and cognitive scientists have advocated for an ‘interactive turn’ in the methodology of social-cognition research: to become more ecologically valid, we must design experiments that are interactive, rather than merely observational. While the practical aim of improving ecological validity in the study of social cognition is laudable, we think that the notion of ‘interaction’ is not suitable for this task: as it is currently deployed in the social cognition literature, this notion leads to serious conceptual and methodological confusion. In this paper, we tackle this confusion on three fronts: 1) we revise the ‘interactionist’ definition of interaction; 2) we demonstrate a number of potential methodological confounds that arise in interactive experimental designs; and 3) we show that ersatz interactivity works just as well as the real thing. We conclude that the notion of ‘interaction’, as it is currently being deployed in this literature, obscures an accurate understanding of human social cognition

Social behavior modeling based on Incremental Discrete Hidden Markov Models

12 pagesInternational audienceModeling multimodal face-to-face interaction is a crucial step in the process of building social robots or users-aware Embodied Conversational Agents (ECA). In this context, we present a novel approach for human behavior analysis and generation based on what we called "Incremental Discrete Hidden Markov Model" (IDHMM). Joint multimodal activities of interlocutors are first modeled by a set of DHMMs that are specific to supposed joint cognitive states of the interlocutors. Respecting a task-specific syntax, the IDHMM is then built from these DHMMs and split into i) a recognition model that will determine the most likely sequence of cognitive states given the multimodal activity of the in- terlocutor, and ii) a generative model that will compute the most likely activity of the speaker given this estimated sequence of cognitive states. Short-Term Viterbi (STV) decoding is used to incrementally recognize and generate behav- ior. The proposed model is applied to parallel speech and gaze data of interact- ing dyads

The development of conversational and communication skills

This thesis investigates the development of children's conversational and communication skills. This is done by investigating both communicative process and outcome in two communication media: face-to-face interaction and audio-only interaction. Communicative outcome is objectively measured by assessing accuracy of performance of communication tasks. A multi-level approach to the assessment of communicative process is taken. Non-verbal aspects of process which are investigated are gaze and gesture. Verbal aspects of process range from global linguistic assessments such as length of conversational turn, to a detailed coding of utterance function according to Conversational Games analysis. The results show that children of 6 years and less do not adapt to the loss of visual signals in audio-only communication, and their performance suffers. Both the structure of children's dialogues and their use of visual signals were found to differ from that of adults. It is concluded that both verbal and non-verbal communication strategies develop into adulthood. Successful integration of these different aspects of communication is central to being an effective communicator

When I Move, You Move: Coordination in Conversation

Researchers have been interested in the dynamics of human conversation for several decades. One major focus of this line of research has been the mechanisms by which humans coordinate in conversation. To study the coordination of conversation within dyads often requires an understanding of statistical methods, which handle time series data. Traditionally, there are no definitive standards for defining one of the important parameters in time series analysis, window size. Therefore, the purpose of the current project was to elucidate the mechanisms through which conversational coordination emerges by utilizing conversational turn-taking as the basis for choosing the appropriate window size in the time series analysis. Data from previously collected videotaped conversational interactions were analyzed for the presence of movement coordination using an image-differencing algorithm in MATLAB. Additionally, speech signals time-locked to the video segments were examined for vocal synchrony in pitch using Praat. The participants from the original study were asked to engage in three tasks designed to elicit sarcasm. Only data from one of these tasks, discussing an ironic scenario, were analyzed for the current project. There were eleven dyads each contributing one conversation and each lasting between 2 and 8 minutes. It was thought that both movement and pitch were possible coordination mechanisms, but that coordination patterns would only be uncovered by using time series windows adjusted for turn-taking rates in each dyad. Results from windowed cross-correlations revealed that participants significantly coordinated movement. Post-hoc tests revealed an effect of window size on mean correlations. Although not significant, results from the analysis of vocal coordination revealed a pattern of results similar to those from the movement coordination study. This could be due to a lack of statistical power. Interestingly, patterns of movement coordination were found strictly as a function of a vocal parameter: turn-taking. These results suggest a novel approach to the study of conversational coordination and a more crucial role for turn-taking in the emergence of coordinative structures

Getting to the Core of Role: Defining Interpreters' Role Space

This article describes a new model of interpreted interactions that will help students as well as experienced practitioners define and delineate the decisions that they make. By understanding the dimensions that comprise the concept we call role, interpreters can more effectively allow participants to have successful communicative interactions

Embodied Communicative Activity in Cooperative Conversational Interactions - studies in Visual Interaction Management

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