People

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People Speech Interfaces

• CS 260
• Wednesday, October 4, 2006

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People Speech

• Born to be wild and understand speech
• Speech as an instrument of cooperative action
• What literacy has to do with speech

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A video
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Wired for Speech (Nass Brave)

• Humans are automatic experts at extracting the
  social aspects of speech.
• Our brains associate voice with social
  relationships so what happens when we
  communicate with technology through speech?

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Our brains cant tell the difference

• Gender stereotyping the man (woman?) behind the
  curtain
• pitch, pitch range
• Personality opposites (dont) attract
• volume, pitch, pitch range, speed rate

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Prosody vs. Pragmatics
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• Hello?
• Hey.
• Hey!
• Hey, whats up?
• Not much. How are you?
• Okay!
• Sowhats going on?

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Our talk exchanges do not normally consist of a
succession of disconnected remarks, and would not
be rational if they did. They are
characteristicallycooperative efforts.
H. Paul Grice
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Conversational Maxims

• Maxims of Quantity
• Make your contribution as informative as
  necessary.
• Do not make your contribution more informative
  than is necessary.
• Maxims of Quality
• Do not say what you believe to be false.
• Do not say that for which you lack adequate
  evidence.
• Maxims of Relevance
• Be relevant.
• Maxims of Manner
• Avoid obscurity.
• Avoid ambiguity.
• Be brief.
• Be orderly.

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How we use language

• The maxims describe how speech should be produced
• Cooperative users
• But speech is often subordinate to some kind of
  action
• A sentence serves a syntactic function
• A dialogue act serves a pragmatic function

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Sentence Types

• Constituent interrogatives
• Yes/no interrogatives
• Imperatives
• Assertions
• Each of these sentence types serve a different
  syntactic function

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Would you please pass the salt?
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Dialogue Acts

• Task Management Acts
• Constitutive acts
• Expressives (complimenting someone)
• Declaratives (sentencing someone to prison)
• Informative acts
• Assertives (stating a fact)
• Interrogatives (asking for information)
• Obligative acts
• Directives (requests)
• System directives (calling the help system)
• Commissives (offering something)
• Dialogue Management Acts
• Flow-regulating acts (beginning an exchange)
• Grounds-keeping acts (clarifying a point)

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Task /Dialogue Management Example

• System How may I help you?
• DM exchange initiator TM offer
• Caller I was trying to place a call and must
  have dialed the wrong number
• DM acknowledgment TM acceptance, assertion
• can I get credit for that?
• DM turn assignment TM request
• System Do you need me to give you credit?
• DM acknowledgment, turn assignment TM offer
• Caller Yes.
• DM confirmation, turn release TM acceptance

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The situation in which words are uttered can
never be passed over as irrelevant to the
linguistic expression. Bronislaw Malinowski
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Prosody vs. Pragmatics
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Illiterate

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(No Transcript)
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(No Transcript)
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Illiterate people also

• Live in poverty
• Have not had formal schooling
• Are marginalized
• Feel inferior to educated people
• May not have regular jobs
• Live in literate societies

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Cognition Literacy

• 1
• All Kpelle men are rice farmers.
• Mr. Smith is not a rice farmer.
• Is he a Kpelle man?
• Illiterate Subject I dont know the man in
  person. I have not laid eyes on the man
  myselfIf you know a person, if a question comes
  up about him you are able to answer. But if you
  do not know the person, if a question comes up
  about him, its hard for you to answer it.

• 2
• In the far north all bears are white
• Novaya Zemyla is in the far north.
• What color are the bears there?
• Illiterate Subject You should ask the people
  who have been there and seen themWe always speak
  of only what we see we dont talk about what we
  havent seen.

Experiential, empirical, situational knowledge
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Translating an interface into illiterate

• Replace all text with icons
• Done!

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Its not that simple

• Associating an identifier (icon, number) with a
  concept is a literate task
• Reluctance to learning how to do arbitrary tasks

• Oranges
• Apples
• Bananas
• Please enter your selection

2 apples
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Translating into illiterate, take two

• Turn it into a speech-based telephone
  application.
• Done!

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Issues with speech only interfaces

• Cant support browsing
• Difficult to represent spatial and temporal data
• Requires user to remember a lot of information
• Forced through a deep decision tree
• Memorize command for abstract tasks

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Our own experience

• Environmental factors
• Reluctance
• Attrition
• Memorization of commands
• Clarifications
• Dialect

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An ideal interface for illiterate users