Modelling turn-taking in a simulation of small group discussion
The organization of taking turns at talk is an important part of any verbal interaction such as conversation, particularly in groups. Sociologists and psycholinguists have been studying turn-taking in conversation through empirical and statistical analysis, and identified some systematics in it. But to my knowledge no detailed computational modelling of verbal turn-taking has yet been attempted. This thesis describes one such attempt, for a simulation of small group discussionâ that is, engaged conversation in groups of up to seven participants, which researchers have found to be much like two-person dialogues with overhearers. The group discussion is simulated by a simple multi-agent framework with a blackboard architecture, where each agent represents a participant in the discussion and the blackboard is their channel of communication, or âenvironmentâ of the discussion. Agents are modelled with just a set of probabilistic parameters that give their likelihood of doing the various turn-taking decisions in the simulation: when to talk, when to continue talking, when to interrupt, when to give feedback (âuh huhâ), and so on. The simulation, therefore, consists of coordinating a one-at-a-time talk
Padilha, Emiliano Gomes
Informatics ; cognitive science
Modelling turn-taking in a simulation of small group discussion. The organization of taking turns at talk is an important part of any verbal interaction such as conversation, particularly in groups. Sociologists and psycholinguists have been studying turn-taking in conversation through empirical and statistical analysis, and identified some systematics in it. But to my knowledge no detailed computational modelling of verbal turn-taking has yet been attempted. This thesis describes one such attempt, for a simulation of small group discussionâ that is, engaged conversation in groups of up to seven participants, which researchers have found to be much like two-person dialogues with overhearers. The group discussion is simulated by a simple multi-agent framework with a blackboard architecture, where each agent represents a participant in the discussion and the blackboard is their channel of communication, or âenvironmentâ of the discussion. Agents are modelled with just a set of probabilistic parameters that give their likelihood of doing the various turn-taking decisions in the simulation: when to talk, when to continue talking, when to interrupt, when to give feedback (âuh huhâ), and so on. The simulation, therefore, consists of coordinating a one-at-a-time talk
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