Lexical and syntactic priming and their impact in deployed spoken dialog systems

Abstract

In this paper, we examine user adaptation to the system’s lexical and syntactic choices in the context of the deployed Let’s Go! dialog system. We show that in deployed dialog systems with real users, as in laboratory experiments, users adapt to the system’s lexical and syntactic choices. We also show that the system’s lexical and syntactic choices, and consequent user adaptation, can have an impact on recognition of task-related concepts. This means that system prompt formulation, even in flexible input dialog systems, can be used to guide users into producing utterances conducive to task success.