Spoken Language Processing

We introduce a novel approach for automatically generating a virtual instructor from textual input only. Our fully implemented system first analyzes the rhetorical structure of the input text and then creates various questionanswer pairs using patterns. These patterns have been derived from correlations found between rhetorical structure of monologue texts and question-answer pairs in the corresponding dialogues. A selection of the candidate pairs is verbalized into a diverse collection of question-answer pairs. Finally the system compiles the collection of question-answer pairs into scripts for a virtual instructor. Our end-to-end system presents questions in pre-fixed order and the agent answers them. Our system was evaluated with a group of twenty-four subjects. The evaluation was conducted using three informed consent documents of clinical trials from the domain of colon cancer. Each of the documents was explained by a virtual instructor using 1) text, 2) text and agent monologue, and 3) text and agent performing question-answering. Results show that an agent explaining an informed consent document did not provide significantly better comprehension scores, but did score higher on satisfaction, compared to two control conditions

Linguistics · Natural language processing · Spoken language · Communication · Computer Science · Literature, Language, and Rhetoric Studies · Psychology · Automatic speech recognition · Computational linguistics · Speech processing systems

• Rhetorical Structure Theory

  William C Mann, Scott A Thompson et al.•Third Text•1988

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• Establishing and maintaining long-term human-computer relationships

  Open Access•Timothy Bickmore, Timothy W Bickmore et al.•ACM Transactions on Computer-Human…•2005

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