Statistical approaches to dialogue management have brought improvements in robustness and scalability of spoken dialogue systems, but still rely heavily on in-domain data, thus limiting their crossdomain scalability. In this paper, we present a new multi-dimensional, statistical dialogue management framework, in which transferable conversational skills can be learnt by separating out domaininde...

Descriptive assessments are necessary to identify social norms and establish a foundation for experimental analysis. Much of the skills intervention literature involves goals that have been selected through interviews direct observation behavior without reference desired outcomes. The purpose current study was extend research on descriptive conversations by including additional measures examini...

This study evaluated Children's Friendship Training (CFT), a manualized parent-assisted intervention to improve social skills among second to fifth grade children with autism spectrum disorders. Comparison was made with a delayed treatment control group (DTC). Targeted skills included conversational skills, peer entry skills, developing friendship networks, good sportsmanship, good host behavio...

m This study examined the effects o f a n instructional program on 21year-old students' interpersonal skills development (N = 104). The HyperCard 2.1 program "'Telling bad news" could contain a conversational model that informed students about the main moments and actions in conducting a bad-news conversation. In addition, the program could vary the students' opportunities for reflection by slo...

It is often assumed that one person in a conversation is active (the speaker) and the rest passive (the listeners). Conversational analysis has shown, however, that listeners take an active part in the conversation, providing feedback signals that can control conversational flow. The face plays a vital role in these backchannel responses. A deeper understanding of facial backchannel signals is ...