RI: Small: Flexible Turn-Taking for Mixed-Initiative Spoken Dialogue System

这个项目的目标是确定人与人对话中话轮转换是如何工作的，并以此为基础开发一个灵活的话轮转换模型，用于口语对话系统。前两个目标集中在确定话轮转换是由当前说话者单独决定还是由会话双方协商决定。第一个目标是测量人类受试者在听演讲摘录时，能预测当前说话者是继续还是放弃话轮;第二个目标是分析话轮转换的时间滞后。许多话轮转换具有短的滞后，这有利于说话者控制模型;然而，这可能是常见的言语行为序列、反向通道、早期开始和临时话轮的人为因素。第三个目标是利用前两个目标的研究结果，确定会话者在话轮转换中使用的线索和机制，更好地理解人与人对话中的话轮转换是很重要的，因为它将有助于构建更有效和更自然的口语对话系统，使用户和系统能够更好地合作来解决复杂的任务。它还应该允许口语对话系统与从专家到新手的广泛用户打交道：对于专家来说，让他们采取主动（和转向），以便高效地完成任务，同时为新手提供更多指导和例子。此外，理解人与人之间的话轮转换可能具有生物医学应用。例如，自闭症，这是一种影响社交的疾病，可能会影响人们如何参与轮流，因此轮流生物标志物可能有助于诊断它。

The goal of this project is to determine how turn-taking in human-human dialogue works, and use this as a basis for developing a flexible model of turn-taking for use in spoken dialogue systems. The first two aims focus on determining whether turn-taking is solely determined by the current speaker or is negotiated by both conversants. The first aim measures how well human subjects, listening to excerpts of speech, can predict whether the current speaker will continue the turn or release it. The second aim analyzes timing lags at turn transitions. Many turn transitions have short lags, which favors a speaker-control model; however this might be an artifact of common speech act sequences, back channels, early onsets, and provisional turns. The third aim, using the findings of the first two aims, is to determine the cues and mechanisms that are used by conversants in taking the turn.Better understanding of turn-taking in human-human dialogues is important as it will help in building more efficient and natural spoken dialogue systems, allowing the user and system to better collaborate to solve complex tasks. It should also allow spoken dialogue systems to deal with a broad range of users, from experts to novices: for experts, letting them take the initiative (and the turn), in order to efficiently complete the task, while guiding novices with more directions and examples. Furthermore, understanding human-human turn-taking might have biomedical applications. For example, Autism, which is a disorder that affects social communication, might impact how people engage in turn-taking, and so turn-taking biomarkers might help in diagnosing it.