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Sidås, Albin, and Simon Sandberg. "Conversational Engine for Transportation Systems." Thesis, Linköpings universitet, Institutionen för datavetenskap, 2021. http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:liu:diva-176810.
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Today's communication between operators and professional drivers takes place through direct conversations between the parties. This thesis project explores the possibility to support the operators in classifying the topic of incoming communications and which entities are affected through the use of named entity recognition and topic classifications. By developing a synthetic training dataset, a NER model and a topic classification model was developed and evaluated to achieve F1-scores of 71.4 and 61.8 respectively. These results were explained by a low variance in the synthetic dataset in comparison to a transcribed dataset from the real world which included anomalies not represented in the synthetic dataset. The aforementioned models were integrated into the dialogue framework Emora to seamlessly handle the back and forth communication and generating responses.
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Lee, John Sie Yuen 1977. "Translingual grammar induction for conversational systems." Thesis, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 2004. http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/28719.
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Thesis (S.M.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, 2004.Includes bibliographical references (p. 75-77).
We propose an induction algorithm to semi-automate grammar authoring in an interlingua-based machine translation framework. This algorithm is designed for restricted domains within the context of multilingual conversational systems. It uses a pre-existing one-way translation system from some other language to the target language as prior information. It then infers a grammar for the target language. We demonstrate the system's effectiveness on a weather domain and on a travel domain. We automatically induced Chinese and French grammars for these domains from their English counterparts, and then showed that they can produce high-quality interlingua to be used in translation.
by John Sie Yuen Lee.
S.M.
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Baheti, Ashutosh. "Improving Conversation Quality of Data-driven Dialog Systems and Applications in Conversational Question Answering." The Ohio State University, 2020. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1596469447727479.
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Wärnestål, Pontus. "Dialogue behavior management in conversational recommender systems /." Linköping : Department of Computer and Information Science, Linköpings universitet, 2007. http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:liu:diva-9624.
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Wärnestål, Pontus. "Dialogue Behavior Management in Conversational Recommender Systems." Doctoral thesis, Linköpings universitet, NLPLAB - Laboratoriet för databehandling av naturligt språk, 2007. http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:liu:diva-9624.
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This thesis examines recommendation dialogue, in the context of dialogue strategy design for conversational recommender systems. The purpose of a recommender system is to produce personalized recommendations of potentially useful items from a large space of possible options. In a conversational recommender system, this task is approached by utilizing natural language recommendation dialogue for detecting user preferences, as well as for providing recommendations. The fundamental idea of a conversational recommender system is that it relies on dialogue sessions to detect, continuously update, and utilize the user's preferences in order to predict potential interest in domain items modeled in a system. Designing the dialogue strategy management is thus one of the most important tasks for such systems. Based on empirical studies as well as design and implementation of conversational recommender systems, a behavior-based dialogue model called bcorn is presented. bcorn is based on three constructs, which are presented in the thesis. It utilizes a user preference modeling framework (preflets) that supports and utilizes natural language dialogue, and allows for descriptive, comparative, and superlative preference statements, in various situations. Another component of bcorn is its message-passing formalism, pcql, which is a notation used when describing preferential and factual statements and requests. bcorn is designed to be a generic recommendation dialogue strategy with conventional, information-providing, and recommendation capabilities, that each describes a natural chunk of a recommender agent's dialogue strategy, modeled in dialogue behavior diagrams that are run in parallel to give rise to coherent, flexible, and effective dialogue in conversational recommender systems. Three empirical studies have been carried out in order to explore the problem space of recommendation dialogue, and to verify the solutions put forward in this work. Study I is a corpus study in the domain of movie recommendations. The result of the study is a characterization of recommendation dialogue, and forms a base for a first prototype implementation of a human-computer recommendation dialogue control strategy. Study II is an end-user evaluation of the acorn system that implements the dialogue control strategy and results in a verification of the effectiveness and usability of the dialogue strategy. There are also implications that influence the refinement of the model that are used in the bcorn dialogue strategy model. Study III is an overhearer evaluation of a functional conversational recommender system called CoreSong, which implements the bcorn model. The result of the study is indicative of the soundness of the behavior-based approach to conversational recommender system design, as well as the informativeness, naturalness, and coherence of the individual bcorn dialogue behaviors.I denna avhandling undersöks rekommendationsdialog med avseende på utformningen av dialogstrategier f¨or konverserande rekommendationssystem. Syftet med ett rekommendationssystem är att generera personaliserade rekommendationer utifrån potentiellt användbara domänobjekt i stora informationsrymder. I ett konverserande rekommendationssystem angrips detta problem genom att utnyttja naturligt språkk och dialog för att modellera användarpreferenser, liksom för att ge rekommendationer. Grundidén med konverserande rekommendationssystem är att utnyttja dialogsessioner för att upptäcka, uppdatera och utnyttja en användares preferenser för att förutsäga användarens intresse för domänobjekten som modelleras i ett system. Utformningen av dialogstrategihantering är därför en av de viktigaste uppgifterna för sådana system. Baserat på empiriska studier, liksom på utformning och implementering av konverserande rekommendationssystem, presenteras en beteendebaserad dialogmodell som kallas bcorn. bcorns bas utgörs av tre konstruktioner, vilka alla presenteras i denna avhandling. bcorn utnyttjar ett preferensmodelleringsramverk (preflets) som stöder och anv¨ander sig av naturligt språk i dialog och tillåter deskriptiva, komparativa och superlativa preferensuttryck i olika situationer. Den andra komponenten i bcorn är dess interna meddelande-formalism pcql, som är en notation som kan beskriva preferens- och faktiska påståenden och frågor. bcorn är utformat som en generell rekommendationshanteringsstrategi med konventionella, informationsgivande och rekommenderande förmågor, som var och en beskriver naturliga delar av en rekommendationsagents dialogstrategi. Dessa delar modelleras i dialogbeteendediagram som exekveras parallellt för att ge upphov till koherent, flexibel och effektiv dialog i konverserande rekommendationssystem. Tre empiriska studier har utförts för att utforska problemkomplexet som utgör rekommendationsdialog och för att verifiera de lösningar som tagits fram inom ramen för detta arbete. Studie I är en korpusstudie i filmrekommendationsdomänen. Studien resulterar i en karakteristik av rekommendationsdialog, och utgör basen för en första prototyp av dialoghanteringsstrategi för rekommendationsdialog mellan människa och dator. Studie II är en slutanvändarutvärdering av systemet acorn som implementerar denna dialoghanteringsstrategi och resulterar i en verifiering av effektivitet och användbarhet av strategin. Studien resulterar också i implikationer som påverkar utformningen av den modell som används i bcorn. Studie III är en medhörningsutvärdering av det funktionella konverserande rekommendationssystemet CoreSong, som implementerar bcorn-modellen. Resultatet av studien indikerar att det beteendebaserade angreppssättet är funktionellt och att de olika dialogbeteendena i bcorn ger upphov till h¨og informationskvalitet, naturlighet och koherens i rekommendationsdialog.
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Boulis, Constantinos. "Topic learning in text and conversational speech /." Thesis, Connect to this title online; UW restricted, 2005. http://hdl.handle.net/1773/5914.
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Pérez, Rojas Daniel. "Tlatoa Communicator a Framework to Create Conversational Systems." Thesis, Universidad de las Américas Puebla, 2010. http://catarina.udlap.mx/u_dl_a/tales/documentos/dsc/perez_r_d/.
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The work presented in this proposal describes an approach to solve an actual
problem in the conversational systems area: to enable non-experts to design
and develop in which the user can establish a spoken dialogue systems. In
most of the systems of this type, the specific information relative to the
domain, or the specific information that delimits the specific capacities
and limitations of the system is embedded within the source code. Due to
this, people who want to modify or change actual systems experiment a great
number of difficulties, because they must search and investigate in which
parts of the source code this information is represented. Nowadays there
are some efforts to solve this problem, some of them on the part of private
sector companies, and some others by research centers mainly in universities
around the world; the objective is to separate the domain specific information
from the application, making the creation of new systems easier for people
with few or no programming skills.(cont.) Our proposal was born, when some years ago, in our research laboratory; we tried to part from an existing conversational system to modify it, first to make it work in Spanish language, then to change the domain of the dialogue. However these efforts did not bear satisfying results because the specific information for the tasks that were carried out was in several different parts of the source code, in different programming languages. The idea of the creation of a conversational system framework where the task specific information could be separated from the source code was born, and this idea was approved in 2003 by a committee conformed by UDLAP researchers and external participants, Dr. Luis Villaseñor from INOEP and Dr. Wayne Ward from the Center for Spoken Language Research of University of Colorado at Boulder. Our proposal consists of the creation of a new module that deals with all the aspects relative to the specific information of every task and instance of a dialogue system.
(cont.) This task specific information is specified in text files with XML format that are loaded first by this module, that scans and analyzes them, looking for errors, validating these archives against its respective document type definition (DTD) file. Next a consistency check is made to make sure that these configuration files keep the consistency with others according to the type of information handled. Once the information and its format is validated, this module instructs the rest of the modules in charge of the dialogue (DM, TTS, NLG, NLP, ASR, etc.) how to carry out all interaction in the dialogue system, where they can find the data which they require. The proposal presents the complete architecture of the system, together with a Graphical User Interface by means of which, a user with few or null programming skills will be able to specify a task describing all the elements a conversational system requires. The main contributions of this work are: The idea of a conversational system module that verifies and manages all the task specific information in a conversational system A GUI to allow non-expert users to create his/her own conversational system guided step by step in a simple web based interface.
(cont.) This work has been published in: "An approach to separate the Task-Specific-Information from the source code in Galaxy Based Conversational Systems" D. Perez, , I. Kirschning, WSEAS Transactions on Communications, Issue 1, Volume 3, January 2004. "TLATOA COMMUNICATOR: A framework to create Task-Independent Conversational Systems" D. Perez, I. Kirschning CISSE 2009 Volume 2: Innovations in Computing Sciences and Software Engineering SCSS, presented on December 16, 2009 (to be published).
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Leonhardt, Michelle Denise. "Enhancing affective communication in embodied conversational agents through personality-based hidden conversational goals." reponame:Biblioteca Digital de Teses e Dissertações da UFRGS, 2012. http://hdl.handle.net/10183/49756.
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Embodied Conversational Agents (ECAs) are intelligent software entities with an embodiment used to communicate with users, using natural language. Their purpose is to exhibit the same properties as humans in face-to-face conversation, including the ability to produce and respond to verbal and nonverbal communication. Researchers in the field of ECAs try to create agents that can be more natural, believable and easy to use. Designing an ECA requires understanding that manner, personality, emotion, and appearance are very important issues to be considered. In this thesis, we are interested in increasing believability of ECAs by placing personality at the heart of the human-agent verbal interaction. We propose a model relating personality facets and hidden communication goals that can influence ECA behaviors. Moreover, we apply our model in agents that interact in a puzzle game application. We develop five distinct personality oriented agents using an expressive communication language and a plan-based BDI approach for modeling and managing dialogue according to our proposed model. In summary, we present and test an innovative approach to model mental aspects of ECAs trying to increase their believability and to enhance human-agent affective communication. With this research, we hope to improve the understanding on how ECAs with expressive and affective characteristics can establish and maintain long-term human-agent relationships.
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Sahay, Saurav. "Socio-semantic conversational information access." Diss., Georgia Institute of Technology, 2011. http://hdl.handle.net/1853/42855.
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The main contributions of this thesis revolve around development of an integrated conversational recommendation system, combining data and information models with community network and interactions to leverage multi-modal information access. We have developed a real time conversational information access community agent that leverages community knowledge by pushing relevant recommendations to users of the community. The recommendations are delivered in the form of web resources, past conversation and people to connect to. The information agent (cobot, for community/ collaborative bot) monitors the community conversations, and is 'aware' of users' preferences by implicitly capturing their short term and long term knowledge models from conversations. The agent leverages from health and medical domain knowledge to extract concepts, associations and relationships between concepts; formulates queries for semantic search and provides socio-semantic recommendations in the conversation after applying various relevance filters to the candidate results. The agent also takes into account users' verbal intentions in conversations while making recommendation decision.
One of the goals of this thesis is to develop an innovative approach to delivering relevant information using a combination of social networking, information aggregation, semantic search and recommendation techniques. The idea is to facilitate timely and relevant social information access by mixing past community specific conversational knowledge and web information access to recommend and connect users with relevant information.
Language and interaction creates usable memories, useful for making decisions about what actions to take and what information to retain. Cobot leverages these interactions to maintain users' episodic and long term semantic models. The agent
analyzes these memory structures to match and recommend users in conversations by matching with the contextual information need. The social feedback on the recommendations is registered in the system for the algorithms to promote community
preferred, contextually relevant resources.
The nodes of the semantic memory are frequent concepts extracted from user's interactions. The concepts are connected with associations that develop when concepts co-occur frequently. Over a period of time when the user participates in more interactions, new concepts are added to the semantic memory. Different conversational
facets are matched with episodic memories and a spreading activation search on the
semantic net is performed for generating the top candidate user recommendations for the conversation.
The tying themes in this thesis revolve around informational and social aspects of a unified information access architecture that integrates semantic extraction and indexing with user modeling and recommendations.
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Nooraei, Beidokht Bahador. "A Real-Time Architecture for Conversational Agents." Digital WPI, 2012. https://digitalcommons.wpi.edu/etd-theses/972.
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"Consider two people having a face-to-face conversation. They sometimes listen, sometimes talk, and sometimes interrupt each other. They use facial expressions to signal that they are confused. They point at objects. They jump from topic to topic opportunistically. When another acquaintance walks by, they nod and say hello. All the while they have other concerns on their mind, such as not missing the meeting that starts in 10 minutes. Like many other humans behaviors, these are not easy to replicate in artificial agents. In this work we look into the design requirements of an embodied agent that can participate in such natural conversations in a mixed-initiative, multi-modal setting. Such an agent needs to understand participating in a conversation is not merely a matter of sending a message and then waiting to receive a response -- both partners are simultaneously active at all times. This agent should be able to deal with different, sometimes conflicting goals, and be always ready to address events that may interrupt the current topic of conversation. To address those requirements, we have created a modular architecture that includes distributed functional units that compete with each other to gain control over available resources. Each of these units, called a schema, has its own sense- think-act cycle. In the field of robotics, this design is often referred to as "behavior-based" or "schema-based." The major contribution of this work is merging behavior-based robotics with plan- based human-computer interaction."
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Godson, Linda I. "Conversational Structure in Electronic Mail Exchanges." PDXScholar, 1994. https://pdxscholar.library.pdx.edu/open_access_etds/4848.
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Electronic mail has become a widely used medium of communication in academia, government, and business. It is unique as a communication medium because it makes conversations across time, space, and organizational levels possible. The ability of electronic mail to "forward" a message allows for the creation of chains that preserve the entire conversation for each participant. This appears to be a new linguistic form in which the interactive features of spoken conversation are realized using electronically transmitted text. The purpose of the present study was to determine the extent of the similarities and differences between spoken conversation and electronic mail exchanges. The research questions addressed were 1) What techniques that occur in spoken conversations also occur in electronic mail exchanges?, and 2) How are the techniques used in spoken conversations modified or different in electronic mail exchanges? The data used in this study consisted of electronic mail text collected by the author in the course of her daily work in the data processing division of a large financial institution. The authors were computer technicians and middle managers with a wide diversity of educational backgrounds. Sixteen samples of message "chains" that contained at least three individual messages were selected for in-depth analysis. These samples were analyzed for conversational openings and closings, tum-taking mechanisms, adjacency pairs, and repetition. Of the structural features studied, repetition was used in ways most similar to its uses in spoken conversation. The feature having the most differences from spoken interaction was the tum-taking system. In the electronic mail exchanges there was more variation in the sender's selection of the next sender, including the option for multiple simultaneous replies. Openings and closings took many forms, some of them the same as in spoken conversation. Among the forms that differed were openings that resembled the salutation in a letter and closings that followed each individual message in a "chain." Adjacency pairs such as questions and closings were paired as in spoken conversation, while openings, thanks, and apologies occurred as single utterances.
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Filisko, Edward A. (Edward Anthony) 1977. "A context resolution server for the GALAXY conversational systems." Thesis, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 2002. http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/87207.
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Baptist, Lauren M. (Lauren Marianne) 1977. "Genesis-II : A language generation module for conversational systems." Thesis, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 2000. http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/81547.
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Thesis (S.M.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, 2000.Includes bibliographical references (p. 127-132).
by Lauren M. Baptist.
Thesis (S.M.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, 2000.
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Elvir, Miguel. "EPISODIC MEMORY MODEL FOR EMBODIED CONVERSATIONAL AGENTS." Master's thesis, University of Central Florida, 2010. http://digital.library.ucf.edu/cdm/ref/collection/ETD/id/3000.
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Embodied Conversational Agents (ECA) form part of a range of virtual characters whose intended purpose include engaging in natural conversations with human users. While works in literature are ripe with descriptions of attempts at producing viable ECA architectures, few authors have addressed the role of episodic memory models in conversational agents. This form of memory, which provides a sense of autobiographic record-keeping in humans, has only recently been peripherally integrated into dialog management tools for ECAs. In our work, we propose to take a closer look at the shared characteristics of episodic memory models in recent examples from the field. Additionally, we propose several enhancements to these existing models through a unified episodic memory model for ECAÂ s. As part of our research into episodic memory models, we present a process for determining the prevalent contexts in the conversations obtained from the aforementioned interactions. The process presented demonstrates the use of statistical and machine learning services, as well as Natural Language Processing techniques to extract relevant snippets from conversations. Finally, mechanisms to store, retrieve, and recall episodes from previous conversations are discussed. A primary contribution of this research is in the context of contemporary memory models for conversational agents and cognitive architectures. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first attempt at providing a comparative summary of existing works. As implementations of ECAs become more complex and encompass more realistic conversation engines, we expect that episodic memory models will continue to evolve and further enhance the naturalness of conversations.M.S.Cp.E.
School of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science
Engineering and Computer Science
Computer Engineering MSCpE
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Crockett, Sterling J. (Sterling John) 1976. "Rapid configuration of discourse and dialog management in conversational systems." Thesis, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 2002. http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/16839.
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Thesis (M.Eng.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, 2002.Includes bibliographical references (p. 70).
This electronic version was submitted by the student author. The certified thesis is available in the Institute Archives and Special Collections.
by Sterling J. Crockett.
M.Eng.
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Erbacher, Pierre. "Proactive models for open-domain conversational search." Electronic Thesis or Diss., Sorbonne université, 2024. http://www.theses.fr/2024SORUS009.
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Les systèmes conversationnels deviennent de plus en plus des passerelles importantes vers l'information dans un large éventail de domaines d'application tels que le service client, la santé, l'éducation, le travail de bureau, les achats en ligne et la recherche sur le Web. Même si les modèles linguistiques existants sont capables de suivre de longues conversations, de répondre à des questions et de résumer des documents avec une fluidité impressionnante, ils ne peuvent pas être considérés comme de véritables systèmes de recherche conversationnelle. Au-delà de fournir des réponses en langage naturel, une capacité clé des systèmes de recherche conversationnelle est leur participation (pro)active à la conversation avec les utilisateurs. Cela permet aux systèmes de recherche conversationnelle de mieux saisir les besoins des utilisateurs, mais également de les guider et de les assister lors des sessions de recherche. En particulier, lorsque les utilisateurs ne peuvent pas parcourir la liste des documents pour en évaluer la pertinence, comme dans les interactions purement vocales, le système doit prendre l'initiative de demander un contexte supplémentaire, de demander une confirmation ou de suggérer plus d'informations pour aider l'utilisateur à naviguer virtuellement et réduire sa charge cognitive. Cependant, en raison du coût élevé de la collecte et de l'annotation de ces données, les ensembles de données conversationnelles disponibles pour l'accès à l'information sont généralement petits, fabriqués à la main et limités à des applications spécifiques à un domaine telles que les recommandations ou la réponse aux questions conversationnelles, qui sont généralement initiées par l'utilisateur. et contiennent des questions simples ou une série de questions contextualisées. De plus, il est particulièrement difficile d'évaluer correctement les systèmes de recherche conversationnelle en raison de la nature des interactions. Dans cette thèse, nous visons à améliorer la recherche conversationnelle en permettant des interactions plus complexes et plus utiles avec les utilisateurs. Nous proposons plusieurs méthodes et approches pour atteindre cet objectif. Premièrement, dans les chapitres 1 et 2, nous étudions comment les simulations d'utilisateurs peuvent être utilisées pour former et évaluer des systèmes qui raffinent les requêtes via des interactions séquentielles avec l'utilisateur. Nous nous concentrons sur l'interaction séquentielle basée sur les clics avec une simulation utilisateur pour clarifier les requêtes.Ensuite, dans les chapitres 3 et 4, nous explorons comment les ensembles de données IR existants peuvent être améliorés avec des interactions simulées pour améliorer les capacités IR dans la recherche conversationnelle et comment les interactions à initiatives mixtes peuvent servir à la récupération de documents et à la désambiguïsation des requêtes. Dans le chapitre 4, nous proposons d'augmenter l'ensemble de données AmbigNQ avec des questions de clarification pour mieux former et évaluer les systèmes afin d'effectuer des tâches de réponse proactive aux questions, où les systèmes sont censés lever l'ambiguïté des questions initiales des utilisateurs avant de répondre. Enfin, dans le dernier chapitre, nous nous sommes concentrés sur l'interaction entre les systèmes et un moteur de recherche externe. Nous avons introduit une nouvelle méthode d'approche pour apprendre à un modèle de langage à évaluer en interne sa capacité à répondre correctement à une requête donnée, sans utiliser autre chose que les données comprises dans son apprentissageConversational systems are increasingly becoming important gateways to information in a wide range of application domains such as customer service, health, education, office work, online shopping, and web search.While existing language models are able to follow long conversations, answer questions, and summarize documents with impressive fluency, they cannot be considered as true conversational search systems.Beyond providing natural language answers, a key capability of conversational search systems is their (pro)active participation in the conversation with users. This allows conversational search systems to better capture users' needs but also guide, and assist them during search sessions. In particular, when users cannot browse the list of documents to assess the relevance, as in pure speech interactions, the system needs to take the initiative to ask for additional context, ask for confirmation, or suggest more information to help the user navigate virtually and reduce his cognitive load. Additionally, these models are expected not only to take the initiate in conversation with users but also to proactively interact with a diverse range of other systems or database, including various tools (calendar, calculator ), internet (search engines), and various other APIs (weather, maps, e-commerce, booking.. ). However, due to the high cost of collecting and annotating such data, available conversational datasets for information access are typically small, hand-crafted, and limited to domain-specific applications such as recommendation or conversational question-answering, which are typically user-initiated and contain simple or a series of contextualized questions. In addition, it is particularly challenging to properly evaluate conversational search systems because of the nature of the interactions.In this thesis, we aim to improve conversational search by enabling more complex and useful interactions with users. We propose multiple methods and approaches to achieve this goal.First, in chapter 1 and 2, we investigate how user simulations can be used to train and evaluate systems that perform query refinement through sequential interactions with the user. We focus on sequential click-based interaction with a user simulation for clarifying queries.Then, in chapter 3 and chapter 4, we explore how existing IR datasets can be enhanced with simulated interactions to improve IR capabilities in conversational search and how mixed-initiative interactions can serve document retrieval and query disambiguation. In chapter 4, we propose to augment the AmbigNQ dataset with clarifying questions to better train and evaluate systems to perform pro-active question-answering tasks, where systems are expected to disambiguate the initial user questions before answering. To our knowledge, PAQA is the first dataset providing both questions, answers, supporting documents, and clarifying questions covering multiple types of ambiguity (entity references, event references, properties, time-dependent…) with enough examples for fine-tuning models. Finally, in the last chapter, we focused on the interaction between systems and an external search engine. We introduced a new approach method to teach a language model to internally assess its ability to answer properly a given query, without using anything more than data comprised used for its training. The resulting model can directly identify its ability to answer a given question, with performances comparable -if not superior- to widely accepted hallucination detection baselines such as perplexity-based approaches which are strong exogenous baselines. It allows models to proactively query search API depending on its ability to answer the question
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Gupta, Swati. "Generating politeness for conversational systems aimed to teach english as a second language." Thesis, University of Sheffield, 2009. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.522415.
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Xue, Jian. "Improvement of decoding engine & phonetic decision tree in acoustic modeling for online large vocabulary conversational speech recognition." Diss., Columbia, Mo. : University of Missouri-Columbia, 2007. http://hdl.handle.net/10355/4821.
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Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Missouri-Columbia, 2007.The entire dissertation/thesis text is included in the research.pdf file; the official abstract appears in the short.pdf file (which also appears in the research.pdf); a non-technical general description, or public abstract, appears in the public.pdf file. Title from title screen of research.pdf file (viewed on March 4, 2008) Vita. Includes bibliographical references.
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Canducci, Marco. "End-to-End Goal-Oriented Conversational Agent for Risk Awareness." Master's thesis, Alma Mater Studiorum - Università di Bologna, 2020. http://amslaurea.unibo.it/20381/.
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Traditional development of goal-oriented conversational agents typically require a lot of domain-specific handcrafting, which precludes scaling up to different domains; end-to-end systems would escape this limitation because they can be trained directly from dialogues. The very promising success recently obtained in end-to-end chatbots development could carry over to goal-oriented settings: applying deep learning models for building robust and scalable goal-oriented dialog systems directly from corpora of conversations is a challenging task and an open research area. For this reason, I decided that it would have been more relevant in the context of a master's thesis to experiment and get acquainted with these new promising methodologies - although not yet ready for production - rather than investing time in hand-crafting dialogue rules for a domain-specific solution. My thesis work had the following macro objectives: (i) investigate the latest research works concerning goal-oriented conversational agents development; (ii) choose a reference study, understand it and implement it with an appropriate technology; (iii) apply what learnt to a particular domain of interest. As a reference framework I chose the end-to-end memory networks (MemN2N) (Sukhbaatar et al., 2015) because it has proven to be particularly promising and has been used as a baseline for many recent works. Not having real dialogues available for training though, I took care of synthetically generating a corpora of conversations, taking a cue from the Dialog bAbI dataset for restaurant reservations (Bordes et al., 2016) and adapting it to the new domain of interest of risk awareness. Finally, I built a simple prototype which exploited the pre-trained dialog model in order to advise users about risk through an anthropomorphic talking avatar interface.
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Rothwell, Clayton D. "Recurrence Quantification Models of Human Conversational Grounding Processes: Informing Natural Language Human-Computer Interaction." Wright State University / OhioLINK, 2018. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=wright1527591081613424.
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Edenholm, Linus, and Filip Mood. "Acceptans av CRS i affärssystem : En studie av affärssystems användares beteende och acceptans för implementationen av Conversational Recommender Systems [CRS]." Thesis, Örebro universitet, Handelshögskolan vid Örebro Universitet, 2021. http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:oru:diva-90021.
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Toney, Dave. "Evolutionary reinforcement learning of spoken dialogue strategies." Thesis, University of Edinburgh, 2007. http://hdl.handle.net/1842/1769.
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From a system developer's perspective, designing a spoken dialogue system can be a time-consuming and difficult process. A developer may spend a lot of time anticipating how a potential user might interact with the system and then deciding on the most appropriate system response. These decisions are encoded in a dialogue strategy, essentially a mapping between anticipated user inputs and appropriate system outputs. To reduce the time and effort associated with developing a dialogue strategy, recent work has concentrated on modelling the development of a dialogue strategy as a sequential decision problem. Using this model, reinforcement learning algorithms have been employed to generate dialogue strategies automatically. These algorithms learn strategies by interacting with simulated users. Some progress has been made with this method but a number of important challenges remain. For instance, relatively little success has been achieved with the large state representations that are typical of real-life systems. Another crucial issue is the time and effort associated with the creation of simulated users. In this thesis, I propose an alternative to existing reinforcement learning methods of dialogue strategy development. More specifically, I explore how XCS, an evolutionary reinforcement learning algorithm, can be used to find dialogue strategies that cover large state spaces. Furthermore, I suggest that hand-coded simulated users are sufficient for the learning of useful dialogue strategies. I argue that the use of evolutionary reinforcement learning and hand-coded simulated users is an effective approach to the rapid development of spoken dialogue strategies. Finally, I substantiate this claim by evaluating a learned strategy with real users. Both the learned strategy and a state-of-the-art hand-coded strategy were integrated into an end-to-end spoken dialogue system. The dialogue system allowed real users to make flight enquiries using a live database for an Edinburgh-based airline. The performance of the learned and hand-coded strategies were compared. The evaluation results show that the learned strategy performs as well as the hand-coded one (81% and 77% task completion respectively) but takes much less time to design (two days instead of two weeks). Moreover, the learned strategy compares favourably with previous user evaluations of learned strategies.
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Schuetzler, Ryan M. "Dynamic Interviewing Agents: Effects on Deception, Nonverbal Behavior, and Social Desirability." Diss., The University of Arizona, 2015. http://hdl.handle.net/10150/556441.
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Virtual humans and other virtual agents are becoming more common in our everyday lives. Whether in the form of phone-based personal assistants or automated customer service systems, these technologies have begun to touch more of our activities. This research aims to understand how this technology affects the way we interact with our computer systems. Using a chat bot, I studied the way a conversational computer system affects the way people interact with and perceive automated interviewing systems in two different contexts. Study 1 examines the impact of a conversational agent on behavior during deception. It found that a conversational agent can have a powerful impact on people's perception of the system, resulting in individuals viewing the system as much more engaging and human. The conversational agent further results in a suppression of deception-related cues consistent with a more human-like interaction. Study 2 focuses on the effect of a conversational agent on socially desirable responding. Results of this study indicate that a conversational agent increases social desirability when the topic of the interview is sensitive, but has no effect when the questions are non-sensitive. The results of these two studies indicate that a conversational agent can change the way people interact with a computer system in substantial and meaningful ways. These studies represent a step toward understanding how conversational agents can shape the way we view and interact with computers.
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Pickard, Matthew. "Persuasive Embodied Agents: Using Embodied Agents to Change People's Behavior, Beliefs, and Assessments." Diss., The University of Arizona, 2012. http://hdl.handle.net/10150/238634.
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Embodied Conversational Agents (i.e., avatars; ECAs) are appearing in increasingly many everyday contexts, such as e-commerce, occupational training, and airport security. Also common to a typical person's daily life is persuasion. Whether being persuaded or persuading, the ability to change another person's attitude or behavior is a thoroughly researched topic. However, little is known about ECAs' ability to persuade and whether basic persuasion principles from human-human interactions will hold in human-ECA interactions. This work investigates this question. First, a broad review of persuasion literature, which serves as an inventory of manipulations to test in ECA contexts, is presented. This literature review serves an inventory to guide future Persuasive ECA work. The ECA literature is then reviewed. Two preliminary studies exploring the effects of physical attractiveness, voice quality, argument quality, common ground, authority, and facial similarity are presented. Finally, the culminating study testing the effectiveness of ECAs to elicit self-disclosure in automated interviewing is presented and discussed. The findings of that automated interviewing study suggest that ECAs may replace humans in automated interviewing contexts. The findings also suggest that ECAs that are manipulated to look like their interviewees are able to induce greater likeability, establish more rapport, and elicited more self-referencing language than ECAs that do not look like the interviewees.
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Kebbe, Lisen. "Keep the conversation going : a study of conversational spaces during family business succession." Thesis, University of Bedfordshire, 2011. http://hdl.handle.net/10547/234472.
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This practice doctorate study addresses the question of succession in family business, and whether it is possible to facilitate the succession process and enhance family relations by working in a systemic, conversational and dialogical way. The high percentage of successions in family businesses which fail and result in closed down businesses has led to extensive research and caused public debate in Sweden. This study contains of four sections. The first section gives an introduction to my felt need of developing the facilitation of the succession process in business families. It also contains a philosophical background to the systemic way of working and a presents my ontology, epistemology and methods for my study and its ethical considerations. The second section puts my study in a wider perspective of this study with a short presentation of the field of family business research; there are interviews with mainstream consultants that are elaborated on and lastly there is a gender perspective on family business consultations. The eight essays in the third section portray my action research into my facilitation of the succession process in the Bjärges family. The succession process began at the end of 2006 and lasted almost five years. Facilitation was performed during the first two and a half years and the last follow-up conversation was held in the beginning of 2011. The Bjärges essays are written in a generative and reflexive way by means of radical, social poetics thus allowing personal involvement in the text. Some of the essays study the succession process from the perspective of dialogical moments; a couple of them reflect on the succession process in a longer perspective and finally there are follow-up conversations with the family members. The fourth section deals with knowledge gained from working with this study, knowledge I have taken into my practice where I facilitate family members to make their own decisions. It also includes my reflections on theory and on differences in consultancy to family business. Accountants and legal advisors focus on what is best for business, while facilitators working in the dialogical way have family relations at heart. This work proposes a 3rd Way, a new way of facilitating and supporting business families by collaboration of different competences in multi-professional teams. Thus both business and family relations would be addressed.
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Olsen, Linnéa. "Can Chatbot technologies answer work email needs? : A case study on work email needs in an accounting firm." Thesis, Karlstads universitet, Handelshögskolan (from 2013), 2021. http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:kau:diva-85013.
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Work email is one of the organisations most critical tool today. It`s have become a standard way to communicate internally and externally. It can also affect our well-being. Email overload has become a well-known issue for many people. With interviews, follow up interviews, and a workshop, three persons from an accounting firm prioritise pre-define emails needs. And identified several other email needs that were added to the priority list. A thematic analysis and summarizing of a Likert scale was conducted to identify underlying work email needs and work email needs that are not apparent. Three work email needs were selected and using scenario-based methods and the elements of PACT to investigating how the characteristics of a chatbot can help solve the identified work email overload issue? The result shows that email overload is percept different from individual to individual. The choice of how email is handled and email activities indicate how email overload feeling is experienced. The result shows a need to get a sense of the email content quickly, fast collect financial information and information from Swedish authorities, and repetitive, time-consuming tasks. Suggestions on how this problem can be solved have been put forward for many years, and how to use machine learning to help reduce email overload. However, many of these proposed solutions have not yet been implemented on a full scale. One conclusion may be that since email overload is not experienced in the same way, individuals have different needs - One solution does not fit all. With the help of the character of a chatbot, many problems can be solved. And with a technological character of a chatbot that can learn individuals' email patterns, suggest email task to the user and performing tasks to reducing the email overload perception. Using keyword for email intents to get a sense of the email content faster and produce quick links where to find information about the identified subject. And to work preventive give the user remainder and perform repetitive tasks on specific dates.
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Lidén, Alexander, and Karl Nilros. "Percieved benefits and limitations of chatbots in higher education." Thesis, Linnéuniversitetet, Institutionen för informatik (IK), 2020. http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:lnu:diva-96327.
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Prior to 2012 artificial intelligence, the study of intelligent agents, followed Moore’s law which states that compute is doubling every two years. Post 2012 it has been doubling every 3.4 months. However, intelligent agents are focusing on human language, and conversation is rarely developed for education. This study investigates a student’s perceived benefits and limitations of chatbots in higher education, by exploring the relative advantage, complexity, and compatibility of a different chatbot functionality. By interviewing students the authors could establish four different themes that perceived to be important when using a chatbot, Decreasing obstacles, Enhanced learning process, Hesitance towards complexity, and Teacher involvement. Overall, this study suggests that it is preferable to start with little functionality and then successively improve. Because smaller implementations with basic functionality are more accepted and useful to students compared to complex AI functionality, and for future implementation, this is something that should be accounted for.Före 2012 följde Artificiell intelligens, läran om intelligenta agenter Moores lag vilket innebär att data beräkningars kraft fördubblas vartannat år. Efter 2012 har det fördubblats var 3,4 månad. Dock utvecklas ofta de intelligenta agenterna med fokus på det mänskliga språket samt hälsa och sällan för utbildnings syfte. Den här studien undersöker studenters uppfattning om fördelar och nackdelar av chatbotar i högre utbildningssyfte genom att utforska relativa fördelar, svårigheter och kompatibiliteten av olika chatbot funktionaliteter. Genom att intervjua studenter kunde författarna etablera fyra olika teman som uppfattades vara viktiga när en chatbot används, att minska hinder, förbättra lärningsprocessen, tvivel gentemot svårigheter och lärarens medverkan. Sammanfattningsvis pekar denna studie på att det är att föredra att börja utveckla chatbotar med med lite funktionalitet och att sedan successivt öka. Detta för att mindre implementationer med grundlig funktionalitet är mer accepterad och användbar för studenter jämfört med komplex AI funktionalitet, och detta är något att ta hänsyn till i framtida implementationer.
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Desai, Krutarth. "California State University, San Bernardino Chatbot." CSUSB ScholarWorks, 2018. https://scholarworks.lib.csusb.edu/etd/775.
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Now-a-days the chatbot development has been moving from the field of Artificial-Intelligence labs to the desktops and mobile domain experts. In the fastest growing technology world, most smartphone users spend major time in the messaging apps such as Facebook messenger. A chatbot is a computer program that uses messaging channels to interact with users using natural Languages. Chatbot uses appropriate mapping techniques to transform user inputs into a relational database and fetch the data by calling an existing API and then sends an appropriate response to the user to drive its chats. Drawbacks include the need to learn and use chatbot specific languages such as AIML (Artificial Intelligence Markup Language), high botmaster interference, and the use of non-matured technology. In this project, Facebook messenger based chatbot is proposed to provide domain independent, an easy to use, smart, scalable, dynamic and conversational agent in order to get information about CSUSB. It has the unique functionalities which identify user interactions made by their natural language, and the flawless support of various application domains. This provides an ample of unique scalabilities and abilities that will be evaluated in the future phases of this project.
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Haugen, Kajsa, and Rebecca Sälg. "Design av konversationsrekommendationssystem för att skapa en känsla av förtroende som möjliggör för explicit insamling." Thesis, Högskolan i Halmstad, Akademin för informationsteknologi, 2020. http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:hh:diva-42778.
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När en kund går in i en e-butik för första gången får kunden inte anpassade rekommendationer. Anpassade rekommendationer bygger på information om användare från tidigare interaktion med e-butiken genom ett rekommendationssystem (RS). För nya användare har dock inte systemet den information som behövs för att kunna skapa anpassade rekommendationer, detta problem kallas för kallstart. För att bemöta nya användare i kallstart är RS beroende av deras explicita feedback. Konversationsrekommendationsystem (KRS) möjliggör explicit insamling från användare genom konversation. Explicit information kan lämnas av användare direkt i e-butiken. Informationen kan bestå av egenskaper användare föredrar hos produkter men även mer personlig information. Har inte användare förtroende till systemet kan det bidra till att användare inte vill dela med sig av information. För att användare ska vilja lämna explicit information kan KRS bemöta kallstart med att försöka skapa en känsla av förtroende hos användare. Studien är utförd med en designorienterad forskningsansats. Designelement identifierades genom en litteraturstudie som sedan implementerades i en prototyp för att undersöka om dessa kunde skapa en känsla av förtroende för systemet. Prototypen utvärderades därefter utifrån kriterierna trovärdighet, enkel användning och risk som fångar detta förtroende. Resultatet i denna studie indikerar att användare vill få anpassade rekommendationer presenterade och är därför villiga att bidra med den information systemet behöver. Studien presenterar åtta designförslag för hur KRS kan designas för att skapa en känsla av förtroende hos användare med en dialog mellan systemet och användare, möjlighet att ge effektiv feedback och systemets transparens.När en kund går in i en e-butik för första gången får kunden inte anpassade rekommendationer. Anpassade rekommendationer bygger på information om användare från tidigare interaktion med e-butiken genom ett rekommendationssystem (RS). För nya användare har dock inte systemet den information som behövs för att kunna skapa anpassade rekommendationer, detta problem kallas för kallstart. För att bemöta nya användare i kallstart är RS beroende av deras explicita feedback. Konversationsrekommendationsystem (KRS) möjliggör explicit insamling från användare genom konversation. Explicit information kan lämnas av användare direkt i e-butiken. Informationen kan bestå av egenskaper användare föredrar hos produkter men även mer personlig information. Har inte användare förtroende till systemet kan det bidra till att användare inte vill dela med sig av information. För att användare ska vilja lämna explicit information kan KRS bemöta kallstart med att försöka skapa en känsla av förtroende hos användare. Studien är utförd med en designorienterad forskningsansats. Designelement identifierades genom en litteraturstudie som sedan implementerades i en prototyp för att undersöka om dessa kunde skapa en känsla av förtroende för systemet. Prototypen utvärderades därefter utifrån kriterierna trovärdighet, enkel användning och risk som fångar detta förtroende. Resultatet i denna studie indikerar att användare vill få anpassade rekommendationer presenterade och är därför villiga att bidra med den information systemet behöver. Studien presenterar åtta designförslag för hur KRS kan designas för att skapa en känsla av förtroende hos användare med en dialog mellan systemet och användare, möjlighet att ge effektiv feedback och systemets transparens.
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Camargo, Michelle. "Modèle de communication affective pour agent conversationnel animé, basé sur des facettes de personnalité et des buts de communication "cachés"." Phd thesis, Université de Grenoble, 2012. http://tel.archives-ouvertes.fr/tel-00721769.
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Les Agents Conversationnels Animés (ACA) sont des personnages virtuels interactifs et expressifs, dont l'aspect est très souvent " humain ", exploitant différentes modalités telles que la face, le langage, les gestes, le regard ou encore la prosodie de la voix. Le but est qu'ils s'expriment en langage naturel et puissent dialoguer avec des interlocuteurs humains. Pour développer un ACA, il faut d'abord comprendre que des aspects tels que personnalité, les émotions et leur apparence sont extrêmement importants. Le travail qui est présenté dans cette thèse a pour objectif d'augmenter l'acceptabilité et la crédibilité des agents au moyen de la personnalité, considérée comme une notion centrale à l'interaction ACA-humain. On propose un modèle qui dote l'ACA de facettes de personnalité et de buts de communication " cachés " et qui module ainsi ses actions conversationnelles. Ce travail présente également une application de jeu de type "puzzle", intégrant un ACA doté de facettes de personnalité et de buts " cachés ", qui a servi de support à plusieurs expérimentations et à l'évaluation du modèle proposé.
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Yasavur, Ugan. "Statistical Dialog Management for Health Interventions." FIU Digital Commons, 2014. http://digitalcommons.fiu.edu/etd/1550.
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Research endeavors on spoken dialogue systems in the 1990s and 2000s have led to the deployment of commercial spoken dialogue systems (SDS) in microdomains such as customer service automation, reservation/booking and question answering systems. Recent research in SDS has been focused on the development of applications in different domains (e.g. virtual counseling, personal coaches, social companions) which requires more sophistication than the previous generation of commercial SDS. The focus of this research project is the delivery of behavior change interventions based on the brief intervention counseling style via spoken dialogue systems.
Brief interventions (BI) are evidence-based, short, well structured, one-on-one counseling sessions. Many challenges are involved in delivering BIs to people in need, such as finding the time to administer them in busy doctors' offices, obtaining the extra training that helps staff become comfortable providing these interventions, and managing the cost of delivering the interventions. Fortunately, recent developments in spoken dialogue systems make the development of systems that can deliver brief interventions possible.
The overall objective of this research is to develop a data-driven, adaptable dialogue system for brief interventions for problematic drinking behavior, based on reinforcement learning methods. The implications of this research project includes, but are not limited to, assessing the feasibility of delivering structured brief health interventions with a data-driven spoken dialogue system. Furthermore, while the experimental system focuses on harmful alcohol drinking as a target behavior in this project, the produced knowledge and experience may also lead to implementation of similarly structured health interventions and assessments other than the alcohol domain (e.g. obesity, drug use, lack of exercise), using statistical machine learning approaches.
In addition to designing a dialog system, the semantic and emotional meanings of user utterances have high impact on interaction. To perform domain specific reasoning and recognize concepts in user utterances, a named-entity recognizer and an ontology are designed and evaluated. To understand affective information conveyed through text, lexicons and sentiment analysis module are developed and tested.
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Gustafson, Joakim. "Developing Multimodal Spoken Dialogue Systems : Empirical Studies of Spoken Human–Computer Interaction." Doctoral thesis, KTH, Tal, musik och hörsel, 2002. http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:kth:diva-3460.
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This thesis presents work done during the last ten years on developing five multimodal spoken dialogue systems, and the empirical user studies that have been conducted with them. The dialogue systems have been multimodal, giving information both verbally with animated talking characters and graphically on maps and in text tables. To be able to study a wider rage of user behaviour each new system has been in a new domain and with a new set of interactional abilities. The five system presented in this thesis are: The Waxholm system where users could ask about the boat traffic in the Stockholm archipelago; the Gulan system where people could retrieve information from the Yellow pages of Stockholm; the August system which was a publicly available system where people could get information about the author Strindberg, KTH and Stockholm; the AdAptsystem that allowed users to browse apartments for sale in Stockholm and the Pixie system where users could help ananimated agent to fix things in a visionary apartment publicly available at the Telecom museum in Stockholm. Some of the dialogue systems have been used in controlled experiments in laboratory environments, while others have been placed inpublic environments where members of the general public have interacted with them. All spoken human-computer interactions have been transcribed and analyzed to increase our understanding of how people interact verbally with computers, and to obtain knowledge on how spoken dialogue systems canutilize the regularities found in these interactions. This thesis summarizes the experiences from building these five dialogue systems and presents some of the findings from the analyses of the collected dialogue corpora.QC 20100611
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Lourenço, Maria Luísa Sobreira Gouveia. "Type inference for conversation types." Master's thesis, Faculdade de Ciências e Tecnologia, 2009. http://hdl.handle.net/10362/3960.
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Trabalho apresentado no âmbito do Mestrado em Engenharia Informática, como requisito parcial para obtenção do grau de Mestre em Engenharia InformáticaThis dissertation tackles the problem of type inference for conversation types by devising and implementing a type inference algorithm. This is an interesting issue to address if we take into account that service-oriented applications can have very rich and complex protocols of services’usage, thus requiring the programmer to annotate every service invocation with a type corresponding to his role in a protocol, which would make the development of such applications quite unpractical. Therefore, freeing the programmer from that task, by having inference of types that describe such protocols, is quite desirable not only because it is cumbersome and tedious to do such annotations but also because it reduces the occurrences of errors when developing real complex systems. While there is several work done related to session types and type inference in the context of binary sessions, work regarding multiparty conversations is still lacking even though there are some proposals related to multi-session conversations(i.e. interactions happen through shared channels that are distributed at service invocation time to all participants). Our approach is based on Conversation Calculus, a process calculus that models services’primitives based on conversations access point where all the interactions of a conversation take place. In order to test our type inference algorithm we designed and implemented a prototype of a proof of-concept distributed programming language based on Conversation Calculus. Finally, we show that our type inference algorithm is sound, complete, decidable and that it always returns a principal typing.
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Raoufi, Matthew M. "How can I help you? : The delivery of e-government services by means of a digital assistant." Doctoral thesis, Umeå : Umeå University, 2005. http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:umu:diva-526.
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Xiao, Jun. "Empirical Studies on Embodied Conversational Agents." Diss., Georgia Institute of Technology, 2006. http://hdl.handle.net/1853/14080.
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A great deal of effort has been put into developing Embodied Conversational Agent (ECA) systems that provide a human-like assistant in the user interface. However, little is known whether improvements to ECA interfaces made by such efforts can ever be significant from the users point of view. I studied user experiences with ECA interfaces and evaluated the ECA style of interaction with respect to user expectation, perception, behavior and performance. I introduce a conceptual framework that offers a holistic view of the design space of ECA systems. I also have created a middleware toolkit that facilitates rapid development of application content across different speech and animation platforms. A series of user studies has been carried out to investigate the similarities and differences between human-computer interaction and human-ECA interaction and between human-ECA interaction and human-human interaction. Results from these studies provide strong evidence that people are consciously aware of the capabilities and limitations of ECAs. Traditional GUI design heuristics should be carefully followed when designing ECA interfaces. Furthermore, the results soundly suggest that designers of ECA interfaces take extra care to accommodate individual differences and preferences. Social norms that guide human-human interaction greatly affect individuals expectation and perception of ECA characteristics. The findings support the argument that drawing from both human-computer interaction and human-human interaction can be significantly advantageous to the design of both effective and affective human-ECA interaction.
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Lee, Vivienne C. (Vivienne Catherine). "LanguageLand : a multimodal conversational spoken language learning system." Thesis, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 2004. http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/33143.
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Thesis (M. Eng.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, 2004.Includes bibliographical references (leaves 96-98).
LanguageLand is a multimodal conversational spoken language learning system whose purpose is to help native English users learn Mandarin Chinese. The system is centered on a game that involves navigation on a simulated map. It consists of an edit and play mode. In edit mode, users can set up the street map with whichever objects (such as a house, a church, a policeman) they see in the toolbar. This can be done through spoken conversation over the telephone or typed text along with mouse clicks. In play mode, users are given a start and end corner and the goal is to get from the start to the end on the map. While the system only responds actively to accurate Mandarin phrases, the user can speak or type in English to obtain Mandarin translations of those English words or phrases. The LanguageLand application is built using Java and Swing. The overall system is constructed using the Galaxy Communicator architecture and existing SLS technologies including Summit for speech recognition, Tina for NL understanding, Genesis for NL generation, and Envoice for speech synthesis.
by Vivienne C. Lee.
M.Eng.
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Lau, Tien-Lok Jonathan 1980. "SLLS : an online conversational spoken language learning system." Thesis, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 2003. http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/29684.
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Thesis: M. Eng., Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, 2003Includes bibliographical references (leaves 75-77).
The Spoken Language Learning System (SLLS) is intended to be an engaging, educational, and extensible spoken language learning system showcasing the multilingual capabilities of the Spoken Language Systems Group's (SLS) systems. The motivation behind SLLS is to satisfy both the demand for spoken language learning in an increasingly multi-cultural society and the desire for continued development of the multilingual systems at SLS. SLLS is an integration of an Internet presence with augmentations to SLS's Mandarin systems built within the Galaxy architecture, focusing on the situation of an English speaker learning Mandarin. We offer language learners the ability to listen to spoken phrases and simulated conversations online, engage in interactive dynamic conversations over the telephone, and review audio and visual feedback of their conversations. We also provide a wide array of administration and maintenance features online for teachers and administrators to facilitate continued system development and user interaction, such as lesson plan creation, vocabulary management, and a requests forum. User studies have shown that there is an appreciation for the potential of the system and that the core operation is intuitive and entertaining. The studies have also helped to illuminate the vast array of future work necessary to further polish the language learning experience and reduce the administrative burden. The focus of this thesis is the creation of the first iteration of SLLS; we believe we have taken the first step down the long but hopeful path towards helping people speak a foreign language.
by Tien-Lok Jonathan Lau.
M. Eng.
M.Eng. Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science
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Singer, Ronald A. "Embodying conversational characteristics in a graphical user interface." Thesis, n.p, 1992. http://ethos.bl.uk/.
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Marthinsen, Tor Henrik Aasness. "Conversational CBR for Improved Patient Information Acquisition." Thesis, Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Department of Computer and Information Science, 2007. http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:no:ntnu:diva-8803.
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In this thesis we describe our study of two knowledge intensive Conversational Case-Based Reasoning (CCBR) systems and their methods. We look in particular at the way they have solved inferencing and question ranking. Then we continue with a description of our own design for a CCBR system, that will help patients share their experiences of side effects with drugs, with other patients. We describe how we create cases, how our question selection methods work and present an example of how the domain model will look. It is also included a simulation of how a dialogue would be for a patient. The design we have created is a good basis for implementing a knowledge intensive CCBR system. The system should work better than a normal CCBR system, because of the inferencing and question ranking methods, which should lessen the cognitive load on the user and require fewer questions answered, to reach a good solution.
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Adenowo, Adetokunbo. "Augmented conversation and cognitive apprenticeship metamodel based intelligent learning activity builder system." Thesis, De Montfort University, 2012. http://hdl.handle.net/2086/8238.
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This research focused on a formal (theory based) approach to designing Intelligent Tutoring System (ITS) authoring tool involving two specific conventional pedagogical theories—Conversation Theory (CT) and Cognitive Apprenticeship (CA). The research conceptualised an Augmented Conversation and Cognitive Apprenticeship Metamodel (ACCAM) based on apriori theoretical knowledge and assumptions of its underlying theories. ACCAM was implemented in an Intelligent Learning Activity Builder System (ILABS)—an ITS authoring tool. ACCAM’s implementation aims to facilitate formally designed tutoring systems, hence, ILABS―the practical implementation of ACCAM― constructs metamodels for Intelligent Learning Activity Tools (ILATs) in a numerical problem-solving context (focusing on the construction of procedural knowledge in applied numerical disciplines). Also, an Intelligent Learning Activity Management System (ILAMS), although not the focus of this research, was developed as a launchpad for ILATs constructed and to administer learning activities. Hence, ACCAM and ILABS constitute the conceptual and practical contributions that respectively flow from this research. ACCAM’s implementation was tested through the evaluation of ILABS and ILATs within an applied numerical domain―the accounting domain. The evaluation focused on the key constructs of ACCAM―cognitive visibility and conversation, implemented through a tutoring strategy employing Process Monitoring (PM). PM augments conversation within a cognitive apprenticeship framework; it aims to improve the visibility of the cognitive process of a learner and infers intelligence in tutoring systems. PM was implemented via an interface that attempts to bring learner’s thought process to the surface. This approach contrasted with previous studies that adopted standard Artificial Intelligence (AI) based inference techniques. The interface-based PM extends the existing CT and CA work. The strategy (i.e. interface-based PM) makes available a new tutoring approach that aimed fine-grain (or step-wise) feedbacks, unlike the goal-oriented feedbacks of model-tracing. The impact of PM—as a preventive strategy (or intervention) and to aid diagnosis of learners’ cognitive process—was investigated in relation to other constructs from the literature (such as detection of misconception, feedback generation and perceived learning effectiveness). Thus, the conceptualisation and implementation of PM via an interface also contributes to knowledge and practice. The evaluation of the ACCAM-based design approach and investigation of the above mentioned constructs were undertaken through users’ reaction/perception to ILABS and ILAT. This involved, principally, quantitative approach. However, a qualitative approach was also utilised to gain deeper insight. Findings from the evaluation supports the formal (theory based) design approach—the design of ILABS through interaction with ACCAM. Empirical data revealed the presence of conversation and cognitive visibility constructs in ILATs, which were determined through its behaviour during the learning process. This research identified some other theoretical elements (e.g. motivation, reflection, remediation, evaluation, etc.) that possibly play out in a learning process. This clarifies key conceptual variables that should be considered when constructing tutoring systems for applied numerical disciplines (e.g. accounting, engineering). Also, the research revealed that PM enhances the detection of a learner’s misconception and feedback generation. Nevertheless, qualitative data revealed that frequent feedbacks due to the implementation of PM could be obstructive to thought process at advance stage of learning. Thus, PM implementations should also include delayed diagnosis, especially for advance learners who prefer to have it on request. Despite that, current implementation allows users to turn PM off, thereby using alternative learning route. Overall, the research revealed that the implementation of interface-based PM (i.e. conversation and cognitive visibility) improved the visibility of learner’s cognitive process, and this in turn enhanced learning—as perceived.
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Ledington, P. W. J. "Intervening in organisational conversations using soft systems methodology." Thesis, Lancaster University, 1989. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.276848.
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Radde, Sven [Verfasser], and Burkhard [Akademischer Betreuer] Freitag. "A Layered Conversational Recommender System / Sven Radde. Betreuer: Burkhard Freitag." Passau : Universitätsbibliothek der Universität Passau, 2013. http://d-nb.info/1037243102/34.
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Thomas, Peter James. "Conversation analysis in interactive computer system design." Thesis, University of Hull, 1990. http://hydra.hull.ac.uk/resources/hull:3895.
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Chapter one discusses the rationale for, and the aims of, this study. The design of interactive computer systems is an enterprise quite distinct from the design of other artefacts: design, or inventing a pattern, for interactive computer systems is a matter of design for use.HCI research has recognised the need for a user-centred approach to design, and has correspondingly drawn upon a variety of disciplines. However, the dominance of psychological theory and method has led to the exclusion of a body of applicable findings and methods from disciplines which deal with human interaction, and to a failure to systematically investigate the the links between human interaction and human-computer interaction. Prospectively, conversation analysis provides the resources for design of more natural interactive systems,and represents the possibility of design guidance which avoids the problems inherent in current design guidelines. The methods and findings of conversation analysis, this chapter has proposed, will provide a principled approach both to the investigation of human-computer interaction, and to the design of interactive systems. Within the general aim of investigating the applicability of conversation analysis to HCI, the remainder of this study addresses both the theoretical issues, and illustrates the practical outcomes, in relation to an empirical study of user-system interaction. Chapter two examines in greater detail the perspective of ethnomethodology and the findings of conversation analysis. The expository materials, such as exist in these fields, are recognised as being difficult, especially so for those who may be approaching these topics for the first time, and from other than sociological backgrounds. Accordingly the discussion concentrates upon only their more central assumptions and findings. Chapter one observes that conversation analysis and ethnomethodology have not yet found expression in HCI research largely because of the divergence between their methods and those of psychology. The exact nature of those methods, and their advantages for HCI research, are explored in chapter three. This discussion concerns both the practical methodology adopted in this study, the relationship between experimental and non-experimental investigative methods, and the practical applicability of the methods of conversation analysis in the investigation of human-computer interaction.An empirical study of human-computer interaction is undertaken in chapter four. The examination of videotaped sequences of humancomputer interaction through conversation analytic methods is combined with the findings of conversation analysis, to formulate design guidelines and recommendations. Finally, chapter five attempts to assess the significance of this approach to HCI research and design. The promising route which conversation analysis provides for investigation of user-system interaction, and the possibility that it can inform the design of future interactive systems, is explored.
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Javel, Georges. "C. R. E. A. T. : conception, realisation et enchainement des applications transactionnelles." Toulouse 3, 1986. http://www.theses.fr/1986TOU30241.
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Cet ensemble se compose: - d'une demarche methodologique d'analyse, conception et de realisation d'une application transactionnelle. Partant du niveau conceptuel, cette demarche utilise les acquis dans le domaine des modeles de donnees et des modeles de traitement; - d'un logiciel qui permet d'aider l'utilisateur dans le parcours qu'il effectue dans les differents traitements d'une application transactionnelle. Ce parcours, souvent gere par le traitement de l'application, est ici gere par le logiciel.
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Xiao, He. "An affective personality for an embodied conversational agent." Thesis, Curtin University, 2006. http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.11937/167.
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Curtin Universitys Embodied Conversational Agents (ECA) combine an MPEG-4 compliant Facial Animation Engine (FAE), a Text To Emotional Speech Synthesiser (TTES), and a multi-modal Dialogue Manager (DM), that accesses a Knowledge Base (KB) and outputs Virtual Human Markup Language (VHML) text which drives the TTES and FAE. A user enters a question and an animated ECA responds with a believable and affective voice and actions. However, this response to the user is normally marked up in VHML by the KB developer to produce the required facial gestures and emotional display. A real person does not react by fixed rules but on personality, beliefs, previous experiences, and training. This thesis details the design, implementation and pilot study evaluation of an Affective Personality Model for an ECA. The thesis discusses the Email Agent system that informs a user when they have email. The system, built in Curtins ECA environment, has personality traits of Friendliness, Extraversion and Neuroticism. A small group of participants evaluated the Email Agent system to determine the effectiveness of the implemented personality system. An analysis of the qualitative and quantitative results from questionnaires is presented.
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Xiao, He. "An affective personality for an embodied conversational agent." Curtin University of Technology, Department of Computer Engineering, 2006. http://espace.library.curtin.edu.au:80/R/?func=dbin-jump-full&object_id=16139.
Full textAbstract:
Curtin Universitys Embodied Conversational Agents (ECA) combine an MPEG-4 compliant Facial Animation Engine (FAE), a Text To Emotional Speech Synthesiser (TTES), and a multi-modal Dialogue Manager (DM), that accesses a Knowledge Base (KB) and outputs Virtual Human Markup Language (VHML) text which drives the TTES and FAE. A user enters a question and an animated ECA responds with a believable and affective voice and actions. However, this response to the user is normally marked up in VHML by the KB developer to produce the required facial gestures and emotional display. A real person does not react by fixed rules but on personality, beliefs, previous experiences, and training. This thesis details the design, implementation and pilot study evaluation of an Affective Personality Model for an ECA. The thesis discusses the Email Agent system that informs a user when they have email. The system, built in Curtins ECA environment, has personality traits of Friendliness, Extraversion and Neuroticism. A small group of participants evaluated the Email Agent system to determine the effectiveness of the implemented personality system. An analysis of the qualitative and quantitative results from questionnaires is presented.
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Huggins, Paul Alexander. "Great Conversations: Systems, Complexity, and Epic Encyclopedic Narratives in Contemporary American Fiction 1960-2007." OpenSIUC, 2013. https://opensiuc.lib.siu.edu/dissertations/726.
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Encyclopedic narratives, as conceptualized by Edward Mendelson, "attempt to render the full range of knowledge and beliefs of a national culture, while identifying the ideological perspectives from which that culture shapes and interprets its knowledge." The development of system paradigms in the sciences and humanities have shown that the complexity of the modern world-system preclude any such move towards totality. From this ideological shift in contemporary American culture, it follows that recent encyclopedic narratives incorporate these new dynamic perspectives. By applying systems paradigms to works by John Barth, Richard Powers, Annie Proulx, and Junot Díaz, the emergence of the epic encyclopedic narrative as a distinct form signifies the necessity of diversity, ambiguity, and noise in the operation of systems and the production of knowledge. Rather than presenting totalized representations of a culture, epic encyclopedic narratives represent the dynamic modern world-system by emphasizing the presence of the emergent phenomena, recursive symmetry, and noise that are central to complex systems theories. The work Ludwig von Bertalanffy, Immanuel Wallerstein, and Ilya Prigogine, amongst others, posits that complexity spurs the development of increased order and organization in socio-cultural systems; epic encyclopedic novels incorporate this philosophy by subverting hegemonic ideologies (i.e., mythopoetic narratives) by introducing alternative and marginalized discourses that disrupt the status quo. The goal of an epic encyclopedic narrative is to revise or complicate the readers' perception of reality through discursive instruction. As such, these novels purposively introduce noise, such as data-dense passages of unfamiliar discourses, within the narrative to force the reader into discovering contexts needed to derive understanding. Ultimately, epic encyclopedic narratives argue that systems will become corrupted and stagnant if marginalized elements are not synthesized into a heterogeneous whole that recognizes individuality.
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Yang, Fan. "Directing the flow of conversation in task-oriented dialogue." Full text open access at:, 2008. http://content.ohsu.edu/u?/etd,625.
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François, Marie-Christine. "Integration d'un module "intelligent" dans un systeme d'enseignement assiste par ordinateur : ses connaissances, son raisonnement." Toulouse 3, 1988. http://www.theses.fr/1988TOU30076.
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Le module "intelligent" propose entre en jeu lorsque l'apprenant se trouve en situation de difficulte, cette derniere provenant soit du domaine (notions mal assimilees), soit des strategies pedagogiques (suivi de cours mal adapte au profil de l'eleve), soit du dialogue. Les connaissances resultantes sont de trois types (domaine, pedagogie, dialogue) et sont composees d'une partie informationnelle (les objets) et d'une partie operatoire (les regles operant sur les objets). Un prototype a ete realise
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Rivera-Walter, Iliamaris. "Love as Dialogue: Finding Human Connection In Conversation." Diss., NSUWorks, 2017. https://nsuworks.nova.edu/shss_dft_etd/29.
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Dialogue is a conversation situated in a view of existence as relational (Bakhtin, 1981; Buber, 1970). As a result, it evokes love—love as the constant companion to human experience that allows for collaboration, co-existence, and evolution (Maturana & Verden-Zöller, 2008). Dialogue, and its potential to generate love, offers persons the ability to understand how love can be activated within relationships and in daily encounters as a result of dialogical engagement. It also holds implications for the field of family therapy, including the nature and purpose of therapy, as well as training and practice. In order to understand how love and dialogue evoke one another, each was explored as a concept. Dialogism, the foundational philosophy of dialogue as articulated by its principle contributors, Mikhail Bakhtin (1981) and Martin Buber (1970), provides a relational, ontological context for dialogue as a conversation. Love, as an experience of shared humanity—as a “bumping into” humanity’s “collective consciousness” (Gumbrecht, Maturana, & Poerksen, 2006), initiates, fuels, and emerges within dialogue. Love and dialogue are foundational to human existence and therefore cannot be separated. This recognition results in an acceptance of love-as-dialogue. Love-as- dialogue presents individuals with a way of living that orients them toward engagement. It also invites family therapists into a conversation about therapy as a meeting of human beings and therefore as being situated in love.