Generative modelling of dyadic conversations: Characterization of pragmatic skills during development age

Abstract

This work investigates the effect of children age on pragmatic skills, i.e. on the way children participate in conversations, in particular when it comes to turn-management (who talks when and how much) and use of silences and pauses. The proposed approach combines the extraction of "Steady Conversational Periods" - time intervals during which the structure of a conversation is stable - with Observed Influence Models, Generative Score Spaces and feature selection strategies. The experiments involve 76 children split into two age groups: "pre-School" (3-4 years) and "School" (6-8 years). The statistical approach proposed in this work predicts the group each child belongs to with precision up to 85%. Furthermore, it identifies the pragmatic skills that better account for the difference between the two groups. © 2013 Springer-Verlag.