Interruptions in Human-Agent Interaction

Turn management is one of the necessary social interactions skills. In human-human interactions, turn changes are naturally completed by interruption, cooperatively or competitively. Interruptions are inherent in conversation. They can be considered disruptive at first glance, but can also be cooperative and participate to enriching the interaction. To create natural human-agent interaction, Embodied Conversational Agent (ECA) should be able to communicate autonomously with humans both verbally and nonverbally. A challenge is then to handle interruptions during their interaction. This article presents our ongoing work to endow ECA to manage interruption during the interaction with a human partner. In order to achieve this goal, we start by analyzing human-human interaction data.

Automated summary

Turn management is a necessary social interaction skill, with interruptions being inherent in conversation and potentially enriching interactions. To achieve natural human-agent interaction, Embodied Conversational Agents (ECAs) must be able to communicate autonomously through both verbal and nonverbal means. One challenge is handling interruptions during interactions, which requires analyzing human-human interaction data.