An Analysis of Dialogue Repair in Virtual Voice Assistants

Language speakers often use what are known as repair initiators to mend fundamental disconnects that occur between them during verbal communication. Previous research in this field has mainly focused on the human-to-human use of repair initiator. We proposed an examination of dialogue repair structu...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inarXiv.org
Main Authors Matthew Carson Galbraith, Mireia Gómez i Martínez
Format Paper
LanguageEnglish
Published Ithaca Cornell University Library, arXiv.org 13.07.2023
Subjects
Artificial intelligence
Codification
Initiators
Verbal communication
Voice communication
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Summary:Language speakers often use what are known as repair initiators to mend fundamental disconnects that occur between them during verbal communication. Previous research in this field has mainly focused on the human-to-human use of repair initiator. We proposed an examination of dialogue repair structure wherein the dialogue initiator is human and the party that initiates or responds to the repair is a virtual assistant. This study examined the use of repair initiators in both English and Spanish with two popular assistants, Google Assistant and Apple's Siri. Our aim was to codify the differences, if any, in responses by voice assistants to dialogues in need of repair as compared to human-human dialogues also in need of repair. Ultimately the data demonstrated that not only were there differences between human-assistant and human-human dialogue repair strategies, but that there were likewise differences among the assistants and the languages studied.
ISSN:2331-8422