Decision Structuring Dialogue

Prosodic segmentation and structuring of dialogue

Prosody and topic structuring in spoken dialogue

Prosody is critical in conveying topic coherence and the salience of information in speech. In this study we propose that the overall coherence is brought about through pitch level structuring of phrases at both the local level of hierarchical phrase unit positioning and the global level of pitch baseline rise and fall as climax and resolution. Our results show that prosody has critical importa...

Structuring Dialogue between the People and Their Representatives

Conversations between citizens and their representatives may take a number of forms. In this paper, we consider one of these — letters between citizens and representatives — and explore the application of a well-known model of dialogue types to these. We provide a method to give these types a precise characterization in terms of the initial beliefs and desires of the participants, and then expl...

Decision structuring in important real-life choices.

Results from five studies of real-life decision making are compared. In these studies, participants consistently constrained the amount of information they considered to relatively few options and to a somewhat larger set of criteria. Over time, the number of options considered shrank, but the number of criteria used did not. People's intuitive "calibration" with the predictions of normative li...

Decision Theoretic Dialogue Planning for Initiative Problems

The taking of initiative has significance in spoken language dialogue systems and in human-computer interaction. A system that takes no initiative may fail to seize opportunities that are important, but a system that always takes the initiative may not allow the user to take the actions he favours. We have implemented a mixed-initiative planning system that adapts its strategy to a nested belie...