TR2001-024

Non-Verbal Cues For Discourse Structure
Citation: Cassell, J.; Nakano, Y.I.; Bickmore, T.W.; Sidner, C.L.; Rich, C., "Non-Verbal Cues for Discourse Structure", Association for Computational Linguistics Annual Conference (ACL), pp. 106-115, July 2001 (ACL 2001)
Date:July 2001

This paper addresses the issue of designing embodied conversational agents that exhibit appropriate posture shifts during dialogues with human users. Previous research has noted the importance of hand gestures, eye gaze and head nods in conversations between embodied agents and humans. We present an analysis of human monologues and dialogues that suggests that postural shifts can be predicted as a function of discourse state in monologues, and discourse and conversation state in dialogues. On the basis of these findings, we have implemented an embodied conversational agent that uses Collagen in such a way as to generate posture shifts.

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