Some Usability Issues and Research Priorities in Spoken Dialog Applications

Abstract As a priority-setting exercise, we examined interactions between users and a simple spoken dialog system in comparison to interactions with a human operator. Based on the differences seen we propose seven priority issues for research

A global experiment on motivating social distancing during the COVID-19 pandemic

Finding communication strategies that effectively motivate social distancing continues to be a global public health priority during the COVID-19 pandemic. This cross-country, preregistered experiment (n = 25,718 from 89 countries) tested hypotheses concerning generalizable positive and negative outcomes of social distancing messages that promoted personal agency and reflective choices (i.e., an autonomy-supportive message) or were restrictive and shaming (i.e., a controlling message) compared with no message at all. Results partially supported experimental hypotheses in that the controlling message increased controlled motivation (a poorly internalized form of motivation relying on shame, guilt, and fear of social consequences) relative to no message. On the other hand, the autonomy-supportive message lowered feelings of defiance compared with the controlling message, but the controlling message did not differ from receiving no message at all. Unexpectedly, messages did not influence autonomous motivation (a highly internalized form of motivation relying on one’s core values) or behavioral intentions. Results supported hypothesized associations between people’s existing autonomous and controlled motivations and self-reported behavioral intentions to engage in social distancing. Controlled motivation was associated with more defiance and less long-term behavioral intention to engage in social distancing, whereas autonomous motivation was associated with less defiance and more short- and long-term intentions to social distance. Overall, this work highlights the potential harm of using shaming and pressuring language in public health communication, with implications for the current and future global health challenges

A multi-country test of brief reappraisal interventions on emotions during the COVID-19 pandemic.

The COVID-19 pandemic has increased negative emotions and decreased positive emotions globally. Left unchecked, these emotional changes might have a wide array of adverse impacts. To reduce negative emotions and increase positive emotions, we tested the effectiveness of reappraisal, an emotion-regulation strategy that modifies how one thinks about a situation. Participants from 87 countries and regions (n = 21,644) were randomly assigned to one of two brief reappraisal interventions (reconstrual or repurposing) or one of two control conditions (active or passive). Results revealed that both reappraisal interventions (vesus both control conditions) consistently reduced negative emotions and increased positive emotions across different measures. Reconstrual and repurposing interventions had similar effects. Importantly, planned exploratory analyses indicated that reappraisal interventions did not reduce intentions to practice preventive health behaviours. The findings demonstrate the viability of creating scalable, low-cost interventions for use around the world

Three Prosodic Features that Cue Back-Channel Feedback in Northern Mexican Spanish

In order to demonstrate attentiveness during a conversation it is generally necessary for the listener to provide back-channel feedback. To some extent, the times when back-channel feedback is welcome are determined by the speaker and conveyed to the listener with prosodic cues. In this study we sought to identify the cues used for this purpose in Northern Mexican Spanish. Based on quantitative analysis of a corpus of unstructured conversations, we found three cues, of which the most common is a pitch downslope followed by a pitch rise accompanied by a rate reduction on the last syllable and a drop in energy leading to a slight pause

Reasons why Mobile Telephone Conversations may be Annoying: Considerations and Pilot Studies

Mobile telephone conversations in public places are often annoying to bystanders. Previous work has focused on the psychological and social causes for this, but has not examined the possible role of properties of the communication channel. In our paper Do Bystanders and Dialog Participants Differ in Preferences for Telecommunications Channels? (21st International Symposium on Human Factors in Telecommunication, 2008) we consider the possibility that a reason for the annoyance could be that bystander preferences differ from talker preferences, but conclude that this is in fact unlikely to be a major factor. This technical report provides supplemental information, specifically a broader view of the likely causes of annoyance and more details on the ten pilot studies and the data collected

Some Usability Issues and Research Priorities in Spoken Dialog Applications

As a priority-setting exercise, we examined interactions between users and a simple spoken dialog system in comparison to interactions with a human operator. Based on analysis of the observed usability differences and their root causes we propose seven priority issues for spoken dialog systems research

Root causes of lost time and user stress in a simple dialog system

As a priority-setting exercise, we compared interactions between users and a simple spoken dialog system to interactions between users and a human operator. We observed usability events, places in which system behavior differed from human behavior, and for each we noted the impact, root causes, and prospects for improvement. We suggest some priority issues for research, involving not only such core areas as speech recognition and synthesis and language understanding and generation, but also less-studied topics such as adaptive or flexible timeouts, turn-taking and speaking rate