Exploration of possibility of multithreaded conversations using a voice communication system

Abstract

Everyday voice conversations require people to obey the turn-taking rule and to keep to a single topic thread; therefore, it is not always an effective way to communicate. Hence, we propose "ChaTEL," a voice communication system for facilitating real-time multithreaded voice communications. ChaTEL has two functions to support multithreaded communications: a function to indicate to whom the user talks and a function to indicate which utterance the user responds to. Comparing ChaTEL with a baseline system that does not have these functions, we show that multithreaded conversations occur more frequently with ChaTEL. Moreover, we discuss why ChaTEL can facilitate multi-threaded conversations based on analyses of users' speaking and listening behaviors. © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2007.