A plan-based model of misunderstandings in cooperative dialogue

• Published in: International journal of human-computer studies Vol. 48; no. 5; pp. 649 - 679
• Main Authors: ARDISSONO, LILIANA, BOELLA, GUIDO, DAMIANO, ROSSANA
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Elsevier Ltd 01.05.1998
• Subjects: Conversational interaction; Human-computer interaction; Intelligent agents; Miscommunication
• ISSN: 1071-5819; 1095-9300
• DOI: 10.1006/ijhc.1997.0185

We describe a plan-based agent architecture that models misunderstandings in cooperative NL agent communication; it exploits a notion of coherence in dialogue based on the idea that the explicit and implicit goals which can be identified by interpreting a conversational turn can be related with the previous explicit/implicit goals of the interactants. Misunderstandings are hypothesized when the coherence of the interaction is lost (i.e. an unrelated utterance comes). The processes of analysis (and treatment) of a misunderstanding are modelled as rational behaviours caused by the acquisition of a supplementary goal, when an incoherent turn comes: the agent detecting the incoherence commits to restore the intersubjectivity in the dialogue; so, he restructures his own contextual interpretation, or he induces the partner to restructure his (according to who seems to have made the mistake). This commitment leads him to produce a repair turn, which initiates a sub-dialogue aimed at restoring the common interpretation ground. Since we model speech acts uniformly with respect to the other actions (the domain-level actions), our model is general and covers misunderstandings occurring at the linguistic level as well as at the underlying domain activities of the interactants.