387 research outputs found
Information Presentation in Spoken Dialogue Systems
To tackle the problem of presenting a large number of options in spoken dialogue systems, we identify compelling options based on a model of user preferences, and present tradeoffs between alternative options explicitly. Multiple attractive options are structured such that the user can gradually refine her request to find the optimal tradeoff. We show that our approach presents complex tradeoffs understandably, increases overall user satisfaction, and significantly improves the user's overview of the available options. Moreover, our results suggest that presenting users with a brief summary of the irrelevant options increases users' confidence in having heard about all relevant options
Improving Variational Encoder-Decoders in Dialogue Generation
Variational encoder-decoders (VEDs) have shown promising results in dialogue
generation. However, the latent variable distributions are usually approximated
by a much simpler model than the powerful RNN structure used for encoding and
decoding, yielding the KL-vanishing problem and inconsistent training
objective. In this paper, we separate the training step into two phases: The
first phase learns to autoencode discrete texts into continuous embeddings,
from which the second phase learns to generalize latent representations by
reconstructing the encoded embedding. In this case, latent variables are
sampled by transforming Gaussian noise through multi-layer perceptrons and are
trained with a separate VED model, which has the potential of realizing a much
more flexible distribution. We compare our model with current popular models
and the experiment demonstrates substantial improvement in both metric-based
and human evaluations.Comment: Accepted by AAAI201
Processing cost effects of atypicality inferences in a dual-task setup
Whether pragmatic inferences are cognitively more effortful than processing literal language has been a longstanding question in pragmatics. So far, experimental studies have
exclusively tested generalized (scalar) implicatures. Current theories would predict that
particularized implicatures should be cognitively effortful e however, this prediction has
to date not been tested empirically. The present article contributes to the debate by
investigating a specific type of particularized implicature, atypicality inferences, in a dualtask paradigm. In three experiments, we used either a non-linguistic (Experiment 1) or a
linguistic (Experiments 2 and 3) secondary task, to modulate the amount of available
cognitive resources. Our results show that the strength of pragmatic inferences is largely
unaffected by the secondary task, which contrasts with prior predictions. We discuss the
implications for traditional and modern accounts of pragmatic processing
Interaction of Script Knowledge and Temporal Discourse Cues in a Visual World Study
There is now a well-established literature showing that people anticipate
upcoming concepts and words during language processing. Commonsense
knowledge about typical event sequences and verbal selectional preferences
can contribute to anticipating what will be mentioned next. We here investigate how temporal discourse connectives (before, after), which signal event
ordering along a temporal dimension, modulate predictions for upcoming
discourse referents. Our study analyses anticipatory gaze in the visual world
and supports the idea that script knowledge, temporal connectives (before
eating → menu, appetizer), and the verb’s selectional preferences (order →
appetizer) jointly contribute to shaping rapid prediction of event participants
When do we leave discourse relations underspecified?:The effect of formality and relation type
Speakers have several options when they express a discourse relation: they can leave it implicit, or make it explicit, usually through a connective. Although not all connectives can go with every relation, there is one that is particularly frequent and compatible with very many discourse relations, namely and. In this paper, we investigate the effect of discourse relation type and text genre on the production and perception of underspecified relations of contrast and consequence signalled by and. We combine a corpus study of spoken English, a production experiment and a perception experiment in order to test two hypotheses: (1) and is more compatible with relations of consequence than of contrast, due to factors of cognitive complexity and conceptual differences; (2) and is more compatible with informal than formal genres, because of requirements of recipient design. The three studies partially converge in identifying a stable effect of relation type and genre on the production and perception of underspecified relations of consequence and contrast marked by and
Informationally redundant utterances elicit pragmatic inferences
Most theories of pragmatics and language processing predict that speakers avoid excessive informational redundancy. Informationally redundant utterances are, however, quite common in natural dialogue. From a comprehension standpoint, it remains unclear how comprehenders interpret these utterances, and whether they make attempts to reconcile the ‘dips’ in informational utility with expectations of ‘appropriate’ or ‘rational’ speaker informativity. We show that informationally redundant (overinformative) utterances can trigger pragmatic inferences that increase utterance utility in line with comprehender expectations. In a series of three studies, we look at utterances which refer to stereotyped event sequences describing common activities (scripts). When comprehenders encounter utterances describing events that can be easily inferred from prior context, they interpret them as signifying that the event conveys new, unstated information (i.e. an event otherwise assumed to be habitual, such as paying the cashier when shopping, is reinterpreted as non-habitual). We call these inferences atypicality inferences. Further, we show that the degree to which these atypicality inferences are triggered depends on the framing of the utterance. In the absence of an exclamation mark or a discourse marker indicating the speaker's specific intent to communicate the given information, such inferences are far less likely to arise. Overall, the results demonstrate that excessive conceptual redundancy leads to comprehenders revising the conversational common ground, in an effort to accommodate unexpected dips in informational utility
The role of non-connective discourse cues and their interaction with connectives
The disambiguation and processing of coherence relations is often investigated with a focus on explicit connectives, such as but or so. Other, non-connective cues from the context also facilitate discourse inferences, although their precise disambiguating role and interaction with connectives have been largely overlooked in the psycholinguistic literature so far. This study reports on two crowdsourcing experiments that test the role of contextual cues (parallelism, antonyms, resultative verbs) in the disambiguation of contrast and consequence relations. We compare the effect of contextual cues in conceptually different relations, and with connectives that differ in their semantic precision. Using offline tasks, our results show that contextual cues significantly help disambiguating contrast and consequence relations in the absence of connectives. However, when connectives are present in the context, the effect of cues only holds if the connective is acceptable in the target relation. Overall, our study suggests that cues are decisive on their own, but only secondary in the presence of connectives. These results call for further investigation of the complex interplay between connective types, contextual cues, relation types and other linguistic and cognitive factors
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