Skip to main content

Interaction Strategies for an Affective Conversational Agent

  • Conference paper

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNAI,volume 6356))

Abstract

The development of Embodied Conversational Agents (ECA) as Companions brings several challenges for both affective and conversational dialogue. These include challenges in generating appropriate affective responses, selecting the overall shape of the dialogue, providing prompt system response times and handling interruptions. We present an implementation of such a Companion showing the development of individual modules that attempt to address these challenges. Further, to resolve resulting conflicts, we present encompassing interaction strategies that attempt to balance the competing requirements. Finally, we present dialogues from our working prototype to illustrate these interaction strategies in operation.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution.

Buying options

Chapter
USD   29.95
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
eBook
USD   39.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
Softcover Book
USD   54.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Compact, lightweight edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Purchases are for personal use only

Learn about institutional subscriptions

Preview

Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.

Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.

References

  1. Heylen, D., Vissers, M., op den Akker, R., Nijholt, A.: Affective feedback in a tutoring system for procedural tasks. In: André, E., Dybkjær, L., Minker, W., Heisterkamp, P. (eds.) ADS 2004. LNCS (LNAI), vol. 3068, pp. 244–253. Springer, Heidelberg (2004)

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  2. Englemore, R., Morgan, T.: Blackboard Systems. Addison-Wesley, Reading (1988)

    Google Scholar 

  3. Vogt, T., André, E., Bee, N.: EmoVoice – A framework for online recognition of emotions from voice. In: André, E., Dybkjær, L., Minker, W., Neumann, H., Pieraccini, R., Weber, M. (eds.) PIT 2008. LNCS (LNAI), vol. 5078, pp. 188–199. Springer, Heidelberg (2008)

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  4. Moilanen, K., Pulman, S.: Sentiment Composition. In: Proceedings of the Recent Advances in Natural Language Processing International Conference (RANLP 2007), Borovets, pp. 378–382 (2007)

    Google Scholar 

  5. Bickmore, T., Cassell, J.: Small Talk and Conversational Storytelling in Embodied Interface Agents. In: Proceedings of the AAAI Fall Symposium on Narrative Intelligence, Cape Cod, MA, pp. 87–92 (1999)

    Google Scholar 

  6. De Angeli, A., Brahnam, S.: I hate you! Disinhibition with virtual partners. Interacting with Computers 20(3), 302–310 (2008)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  7. Morency, L.-P., de Kok, I., Gratch, J.: Predicting listener backchannels: A probabilistic multimodal approach. In: Prendinger, H., Lester, J.C., Ishizuka, M. (eds.) IVA 2008. LNCS (LNAI), vol. 5208, pp. 176–190. Springer, Heidelberg (2008)

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  8. Kopp, S., Stocksmeier, T., Gibbon, D.: Incremental multimodal feedback for conversational agents. In: Pelachaud, C., Martin, J.-C., André, E., Chollet, G., Karpouzis, K., Pelé, D. (eds.) IVA 2007. LNCS (LNAI), vol. 4722, pp. 139–146. Springer, Heidelberg (2007)

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  9. Bevacqua, E., Mancini, M., Pelachaud, C.: A listening agent exhibiting variable behaviour. In: Prendinger, H., Lester, J.C., Ishizuka, M. (eds.) IVA 2008. LNCS (LNAI), vol. 5208, pp. 262–269. Springer, Heidelberg (2008)

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  10. Grishman, R.: Information Extraction: Techniques and Challenges. In: Pazienza, M.T. (ed.) SCIE 1997. LNCS (LNAI), vol. 1299, pp. 10–27. Springer, Heidelberg (1997)

    Google Scholar 

  11. Jönsson, A., Andén, F., Degerstedt, L., Flycht-Eriksson, A., Merkel, M., Norberg, S.: Experiences from combining dialogue system development with information extraction techniques. In: Maybury, M.T. (ed.) New Directions in Question Answering. AAAI/MIT Press (2004)

    Google Scholar 

  12. Kennedy, C., Boguraev, B.: Anaphora for everyone: Pronominal anaphora resolution without a parser. In: Proceedings of COLING 1996, ACL, Copenhagen, pp. 113–118 (1996)

    Google Scholar 

  13. Boye, J., Gustafson, J.: How to do dialogue in a fairy-tale world. In: Proceedings of the 6th SIGDial workshop on discourse and dialogue, Lisbon, Portugal (2005)

    Google Scholar 

  14. Boye, J., Gustafson, J., Wirén, M.: Robust spoken language understanding in a computer game. Journal of Speech Communication 48, 335–353 (2006)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  15. Boye, J.: Dialogue management for automatic troubleshooting and other problem-solving applications. In: Proceedings of the 8th SIGDial workshop on discourse and dialogue, Antwerp, Belgium (2007)

    Google Scholar 

  16. Cavalluzzi, A., Carofiglio, V., de Rosis, F.: Affective Advice Giving Dialogs. In: André, E., Dybkjær, L., Minker, W., Heisterkamp, P. (eds.) ADS 2004. LNCS (LNAI), vol. 3068, pp. 77–88. Springer, Heidelberg (2004)

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  17. Bickmore, T., Sidner, C.L.: Towards Plan-based Health Behavior Change Counseling Systems. In: Proceedings of AAAI Spring Symposium on Argumentation for Consumers of Healthcare, Stanford, CA (2006)

    Google Scholar 

  18. Prochaska, J., Di Clemente, C., Norcross, H.: In search of how people change: applications to addictive behavior. American Psychologist 47, 1102–1114 (1992)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  19. Tørning, K., Oinas-Kukkonen, H.: Persuasive system design: state of the art and future directions. In: Proceedings of PERSUASIVE 2009, New York, NY, USA, vol. 350 (2009)

    Google Scholar 

  20. Cavazza, M., Charles, F., Mead, S.J.: Character-Based Interactive Storytelling. IEEE Intelligent Systems 17(4), 17–24 (2002)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  21. Appelt, D.E.: Planning English sentences. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge (1985)

    Book  Google Scholar 

  22. Nau, D., Ghallab, M., Traverso, P.: Automated Planning: Theory & Practice. Morgan Kaufmann Publishers Inc., San Francisco (2004)

    Google Scholar 

  23. Hernández, A., López, B., Pardo, D., Santos, R., Hernández, L., Relaño Gil, J., Rodríguez, M.C.: Modular definition of multimodal ECA communication acts to improve dialogue robustness and depth of intention. In: Heylen, D., Kopp, S., Marsella, S., Pelachaud, C., Vilhjálmsson, H. (eds.) AAMAS 2008 Workshop on Functional Markup Language (2008)

    Google Scholar 

  24. Crook, N., Smith, C., Cavazza, M., Pulman, S., Moore, R., Boye, J.: Handling User Interruptions in an Embodied Conversational Agent. In: Proceedings of the AAMAS International Workshop on Interacting with ECAs as Virtual Characters, Toronto, pp. 27–33 (2010)

    Google Scholar 

  25. Cavazza, M., Santos de la Camara, R., Turunen, M.: The Companions consortium.: How was your day? A Companion ECA. In: Proceedings of AAMAS 2010, accepted for publication (demonstration paper), Toronto (2010)

    Google Scholar 

  26. Cavazza, M., Smith, C., Charlton, D., Crook, N., Boye, J., Pulman, S., Moilanen, K., Pizzi, D., Santos de la Camara, R., Turunen, M.: Persuasive Dialogue based on a Narrative Theory: an ECA Implementation. In: Proceedings of PERSUASIVE 2010, Copenhagen (2010)

    Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

Authors

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

Copyright information

© 2010 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg

About this paper

Cite this paper

Smith, C. et al. (2010). Interaction Strategies for an Affective Conversational Agent. In: Allbeck, J., Badler, N., Bickmore, T., Pelachaud, C., Safonova, A. (eds) Intelligent Virtual Agents. IVA 2010. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 6356. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-15892-6_31

Download citation

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-15892-6_31

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-642-15891-9

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-642-15892-6

  • eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)

Publish with us

Policies and ethics