The effects of interaction on spoken discourse

Abstract

Near-term spoken language systems willlikely be limited in their interactive capabilities. To design them, we shall need to model how the presence or absence of speaker interaction influences spoken discourse patterns in different types of tasks. In thisresearch, a comprehensive examination is provided of the discourse structure and performance efficiencyof both interactive and noninteractive spontaneous speech in a seriated assembly task. More specifically,telephone dialogues and audiotape monologues are compared, which represent opposites in terms of the opportunity for confirmation feedback and clarificationsubdialognes. Keyboard communication patterns, upon which most natural language heuristicsand algorithms have been based, also are contrasted with patterns observed in the two speech modalities. Finally,implications are discussed for the design of near-term limited-interaction spoken language systems.