Communication and Collaboration

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Communication and Collaboration

• Christer Johansson, UiB

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Overview

• Face-to-Face communication
• whole situation
• whole body
• subtle signals
• structure turn-taking ...
• Text-based conversation
• reduced feedback
• less context
• situation often abstract
• slower pace
• Easier to get large collections of examples!!

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Overview

• Group-dynamics
• adds complexity
• each participant has their own version
• in text-based group interaction
• common context is often not present
• Complexity adds analytical difficulty

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Face-to-face conversation

• Personal Space
• The distance between participants is governed by
  norms.
• People from more densely populated towns may feel
  comfortable with a closer distance.
• North Americans closer than Britons ...
• The situation may put demands on distance
• Noise etc.
• Social status between participants
• Upper position indicates dominance
• Light from behind make it hard to see details in
  the face. Can be used for advantage.

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Face-to-face conversation

• Arranging the situation
• Placing cameras
• What effect is desirable?
• Equality of participants?
• Dominance
• Social status
• Light conditions

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Eye-gaze / face expression

• Cultural differences
• Gaze directed at face / eyes
• Gaze directed at neutral object
• Back-channel gaze, nod, grunts etc.
• Function
• Indicates if you are listening.
• Japanese hai (lit. yes) often marks just I
  hear you, not I agree with you.
• Establish relation of trust. How sincere is the
  person.

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McGurk effect

• We hear with our eyes!
• A video image of the talker may enhance the ease
  listening.
• Most people read lips without thinking of it.

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McGurk effect

• During presentation open and close your eyes,
  and think about what you hear!

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Talking Heads

• Used to give an illusion of better text-to-speech
  quality.

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Pointing out things

• Deictic devices
• Words like this or that
• Japanese offers three grades
• thing close to me kore
• thing close to you sore
• thing far from us both are
• Pointing devices
• Mouse
• Light pointer
• Hand Gestures modify, intensify, animate

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Back Channel

• Basic Question Are you there?
• Simply establish that there is a connection
• Background noise in a phone
• indicates that the line is open
• Frequency of back items culturally dependent
• Japanese would be impossible without aizuchi
• The fundamental function of back channel
• To indicate that the communication channel is
  open. Do not confuse a mm with understand(I).
• Using name to indicate interest and familiarity.
• Immediately use the name. Maria, what a
  wonderful name. My grand mother, who was a very
  wise woman, was also called Maria

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Turn taking

• Indicated by several factors
• rate of speech
• falling tone
• eye gaze
• etc.
• Learned very early in life mother-child
  interaction
• Listen to a phone conversation
• You may hear before that it will soon be the turn
  of the other.
• You may hear that the conversation is to end
  soon, soon before the goodbye phrase.

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Listener Manipulation

• Can you take out the garbage and put your bike in
  the shed?
• Higher rate of success
• Because it is harder for the listener to find out
  what he/she is saying no to.

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Listener Manipulation

• Can I go before you because I need to copy?
• More successful
• Because the form suggests a reason.
• The listener is often not thinking about what is
  said, but reacts to convention.
• Implement conventions as defaults

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Listener Manipulation

• I need a student to hold this book.

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Listener Manipulation

• Can I have a student to hold this book.

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Cool stuff

• You are where your mind is.

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Avatar conferences

• Move into a virtual body
• If successful, you will experience that you are
  present at another place than your physical body.
• Not so close yet, but might be enough to enhance
  conversation.
• Aside
• 3D manipulations of molecules etc.
• Force feedback

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Dialogue Structure
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Some Speech acts

• Locutionary act utterence a sentence with a
  specific meaning.
• Illocutionary act asking, promising, requesting,
  etc.
• Perlocutionary act producing an effect on
  feelings, thoughts, and actions.

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Speech Acts Austin, Searle

• Mood Illocutionary act Goal
• Indicative Asserting Belief Transfer
• Interrogative Questioning Knowing
• Imperative Requesting Action
• Performative Pronounce Change
• (I hereby sentence you to life in
  prison.)
• Greeting lt--gt request
  attention (?)

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Speech Acts

• Statement a claim made by speaker
• Info-request a question
• Check confirmation of info
• Accept claim made
• Decline the claim/offer
• Understanding indicate if you understand or not

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Easy detection (?)

• Yes/No question Inversion Will lunch be
  served at noon?
• Do you like sweets?
• Wh-question question word Whats on the
  menu?
• Command/Request Book a room for me for
  tomorrow.
• BUT
• Will you pass the salt Form yes/no-question
• Function
  Request
• Can you book a room for me?

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Indirect Acts

• Can you pass the salt? Mention ability
• I want a room with a bath. Let wishes be
  known
• Form Statement. Intention Request

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Cooperation

• Speaker Listener cooperate to create meaning.
• Can you pass the salt?
• X asked about my ability to perform Y.
• I assume X has a plan with what he says.
• X knows I have the ability, so that is not new
  information.
• Therefore, X has some other point. What can it
  be?
• Before performing Y, the ability must be exist.
• X is thus preparing for a request.
• The situation is such that the request is common
  and accepted.
• Therefore X probably request the salt.

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Mind Reading

• Speaker Listener cooperate to create meaning.
• Can you pass the salt?
• The participants constantly engage in predictions
  about the other. The information that is used is
  not explicit.
• Predicting Belief, Desire and Intention
• Grice ... A speaker informs by causing a belief
  that he wants her to know something. What it is
  is inferred.

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Grice Maxims

• Be relevant
• Offer Quality
• avoid obscurity
• avoid ambiguity
• be brief
• be orderly (coherent cohesive).
• Keep to the topic ...

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Assignment voluntary

• Try annotate a short conversation
• Reconstruct a common scene
• Buying a hamburger meal.
• Booking a flight.
• Ordering at a restaurant
• Which spech acts are performed?
• By what means are they performed?
• Act out in small groups.

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Context

• Internal context
• Specific to previous utterence
• Look what a beautiful rose.
• Do you want one?
• External context
• Relies on situation
• Do you want one? (pointing to roses).

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Keep Focused

• Participants have a common interest to keep a
  common focus.
• Speaker and listener may introduce different
  topics/aspects.
• Breakdown
• Repair
• repeats
• reformulation

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Establish Common Ground

• It doesnt matter if you say something sublime,
  if it isnt understood.
• Try to establish common ground
• Common experience
• Model of listener
• What can be assumed?

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Is Harmony a Goal

• Several issues can be seen from many angles.
• Problem we often have problems seen both sides
  of a story.
• The tree and the deer story.
• More knowledge might be harmful to harmony Brian
  gets into trouble because he knows more about
  deer. Alison is trapped, because she has said
  that she cannot understand that some people
  dislike deer.

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Is Harmony a Goal?

• The maxim of keeping quiet.
• If you have nothing good to say dont say it.
• Leads to fixed patterns of thought
• But increases harmony.
• Balance between learning and offending ...
• Be helpful
• Friends more tolerant.
• Dont assume acquaintances to be friends.

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Egocentricity

• The ability to take the viewpoint of another
  develops over the years
• Jack Jill story / MM story.
• At about the age of 4 or 5 many children assume
  that all their knowledge is shared by others.
• Theory of Mind.

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Pause (?)
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Computational Models

• Dialogue
• Grammar

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Finite State Automata

• States transitions between states
• No memoryall info in the state
• Behavior depends on state
• Angry -gt some behavior
• transition to calm through input
• New state -gt other behavior

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Finite State Automata

• Linear sequences can be modeled.
• Learning laws
• Hidden Markov Chains.
• Possible to compute transition probabilities.
• For example between adjective noun
• bad ... girl good ... dog
• etc.

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Finite State Automata

• No memory
• Means the model have problems with long distance
  relations.
• This is the cat that the dog chased __
• This is the cat that the dog that swam in the
  pond chased ___
• Cannot capture recursive/embedded structures.
• The cat the dog chased ran.

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Production rules

• Standard AI technique
• Equivalent to finite state automata
• if (CONDITION) then ACTION

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Push Down Automata

• An Automat with memory
• Stack
• First in Last Out queue.
• Memory allows parsing of embedded structure.
• Unfortunately, no general learning law known. (As
  far as I know).
• Handcrafting grammars.

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Top Down

• S -gt NP VP
• NP -gt N
• VP -gt Vi
• VP -gt Vt N
• N -gt boy
• N -gt girl
• Vi -gt runs
• Vt -gt hits

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Bottom up start with terminal

• S lt- NP VP
• NP lt- N
• VP lt- Vi
• VP lt- Vt N
• N lt- boy
• N lt- girl
• Vi lt- runs
• Vt lt- hits

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Dialogue ProcessingLee, Kim Seo (1997)

• Speech acts
• modeled by state automata.
• transition probabilities from data collections.
• Memory to keep where we are.
• Automats are connected together in a network.

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Processing a dialogue(Lee, Kim Seo, 1997)

• 1. A I would like to reserve a room.
• request-act
• 2. B What kind of room do you want?
• ask-ref
• 3. A What kind of room do you have?
• ask-ref
• 4. B We have single and double rooms.
• response
• 5. A A single room, please.
• response

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Processing a dialogue

• Translating by speech acts may aid real
  understanding.

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Conclusions

• We have seen various models
• Factors
• Human perception
• Cross modal perception
• Evolution of communication
• cooperation of speaker listener
• establish common ground

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Conclusion

• Speech acts
• Function and Form is not in a one-to-one
  relation.
• Detecting the function depends on
• the situation
• context
• the form
• background knowledge

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Time to end the lecture

• Good Luck

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Assignment reminder

• Try annotate a short conversation
• Reconstruct a common scene
• Buying a hamburger meal.
• Booking a flight.
• Ordering at a restaurant
• Which spech acts are performed?
• By what means are they performed?
• Act out in small groups.

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Thank you for listening

• christer.johansson_at_lili.uib.no
• http//ling.uib.no/BREDT