TY - GEN
T1 - Switching to real-time tasks in multi-tasking dialogue
AU - Yang, Fan
AU - Heeman, Peter A.
AU - Kun, Andrew
PY - 2008
Y1 - 2008
N2 - In this paper we describe an empirical study of human-human multi-tasking dialogues (MTD), where people perform multiple verbal tasks overlapped in time. We examined how conversants switch from the ongoing task to a real-time task. We found that 1) conversants use discourse markers and prosodie cues to signal task switching, similar to how they signal topic shifts in single-tasking speech; 2) conversants strive to switch tasks at a less disruptive place; and 3) where they cannot, they exert additional effort (even higher pitch) to signal the task switching. Our machine learning experiment also shows that task switching can be reliably recognized using discourse context and normalized pitch. These findings will provide guidelines for building future speech interfaces to support multi-tasking dialogue.
AB - In this paper we describe an empirical study of human-human multi-tasking dialogues (MTD), where people perform multiple verbal tasks overlapped in time. We examined how conversants switch from the ongoing task to a real-time task. We found that 1) conversants use discourse markers and prosodie cues to signal task switching, similar to how they signal topic shifts in single-tasking speech; 2) conversants strive to switch tasks at a less disruptive place; and 3) where they cannot, they exert additional effort (even higher pitch) to signal the task switching. Our machine learning experiment also shows that task switching can be reliably recognized using discourse context and normalized pitch. These findings will provide guidelines for building future speech interfaces to support multi-tasking dialogue.
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=70349098224&partnerID=8YFLogxK
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U2 - 10.3115/1599081.1599210
DO - 10.3115/1599081.1599210
M3 - Conference contribution
AN - SCOPUS:70349098224
SN - 9781905593446
T3 - Coling 2008 - 22nd International Conference on Computational Linguistics, Proceedings of the Conference
SP - 1025
EP - 1032
BT - Coling 2008 - 22nd International Conference on Computational Linguistics, Proceedings of the Conference
PB - Association for Computational Linguistics (ACL)
T2 - 22nd International Conference on Computational Linguistics, Coling 2008
Y2 - 18 August 2008 through 22 August 2008
ER -