Effective problem solving among multiple agents requires a better understanding of the role of communication in collaboration. In this paper we show that there are communicative strategies that greatly improve the performance of resource-bounded agents, but that these strategies are highly sensitive to the task requirements, situation parameters and agents' resource limitations. We base our argument on two sources of evidence: (1) an analysis of a corpus of 55 problem solving dialogues, and (2) experimental simulations of collaborative problem solving dialogues in an experimental world, Design-World, where we parameterize task requirements, agents' resources and communicative strategies.
Design-World is also based on the method used in Carletta's JAM simulation for the Edinburgh Map-Task @cite_10 . JAM is based on the Map-Task Dialogue corpus, where the goal of the task is for the planning agent, the instructor, to instruct the reactive agent, the instructee, how to get from one place to another on the map. JAM focuses on efficient strategies for recovery from error and parametrizes agents according to their communicative and error recovery strategies. Given good error recovery strategies, Carletta argues that high risk' strategies are more efficient, where efficiency is a measure of the number of utterances in the dialogue. While the focus here is different, we have shown that that the number of utterances is just one parameter for evaluating performance, and that the task definition determines when strategies are effective.
@cite_10
2159574206
The Principle of Parsimony states that people usually try to complete tasks with the least effort that will produce a satisfactory solution. In task-oriented dialogue, this produces a tension between conveying information carefully to the partner and leaving it to be inferred, risking a misunderstanding and the need for recovery. Using natural dialogue examples, primarily from the HCRC Map Task, we apply the Principle of Parsimony to a range of information types and identify a set of applicable recovery strategies. We argue that risk-taking and recovery are crucial for efficient dialogue because they pinpoint which information must be transferred and allow control of the interaction to switch to the participant who can best guide the course of the dialogue.