dynamic adaptation for dialog systemsmaw/papers/sigdial-keynote-final.pdfdynamic adaptation for...

NATURAL LANGUAGE AND DIALOGUE SYSTEMS LAB UC SANTA CRUZ

Natural Language and Dialogue Systems Lab

Dynamic Adaptation for Dialog Systems SIGDIAL 2010



Thanks to my hosts for inviting me to beautiful Japan!


Adaptive Language in Conversation

  Expresses Speaker’s Personality & Identity   culture, style, origin, class

  Dynamically Adapts to Conversational Partner   Convergent : Matching, e.g. two friends (extraverts) talking   Divergent: Tailoring, e.g. parent to baby

  Adaptivity controlled by Dialogue Manager   Adaptivity captured with generation parameters

  Content: Who is interested in what, who knows what   Linguistic: Lexical and Syntactic Choice   Pragmatic: Personality & Social Relationship   Acoustic: Speaking Rate, Amplitude, Prosody

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Outline of my talk

  Mainly talk about expressive adaptation using generation

  Motivation for and summary of our work on PERSONAGE (Mairesse & Walker, UMUAI 2009; ACL2007; ACL 2008)

  Recent work on generating nonverbal expression of personality (Bee, Pollack, Andre’ & Walker IVA2010; Neff, Wang, Abbott & Walker IVA 2010)

  Work in Progress on SpyFeet, a role playing outdoor exercise game for which we are building a new generator SPY-GEN


Why do dialogue systems need to express personality and character?

  Authoring bottleneck for interactive narratives (gaming) (Lester et al 1999, Mateas 2002)

  Linguistic style variation (politeness) supports improvisation in interactive drama systems (Walker etal 96, Walker etal 97)

  Persuasion and Motivation   Achieving communicative goals in dialogue often relies on engaging user affect:

  persuasion, motivation, increase in self-efficacy beliefs, learning

  People react socially to computational agents, thus social norms such as liking people like yourself often hold (Nass & Lee, 2001)

  People make attributions beyond social level: task competence   Personality matching in a robotic exercise coach increased the time that

stroke victims spent on their medically recommended exercises (Tapus & Mataric 2008)

  Tutoring oriented to the student’s ‘face needs’ improved learning in training and tutoring (Porayska-Pomsta & Mellish 2004; Wang et al., 2004)

NATURAL LANGUAGE AND DIALOGUE SYSTEMS LAB UC SANTA CRUZ 6

Limitations of previous work

  Writing character dialogue is an art: it is not described at a level that supports computational models   Work on narrative (the arts) does not suggest specific linguistic or

behavioral reflexes or parameters

  There has been little systematic exploration of personality or social parameters suggested by psycholinguistic findings

  Unclear which psycholinguistic findings have impact in particular application domains

  Almost no evaluation showing variation system produces is perceived by the user as the system intended


If we handcraft, author, or design utterances and characters for specific applications and types of interactive agents, we have an authoring bottleneck. No general purpose technology

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Procedural Language Generation: A Key Technology

  Provides Parameters & Models   Experimental Methods to test Social Perceptions   Dynamic Real-Time Adaptation   Trainable: Machine Learning Techniques   Individual Personalization   Abstract & Modular Interfaces

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Linguistic Generation Module

What to say

Content Planner

How to Say It

Sentence Planner

Surface Realizer

Prosody Assigner

What is Heard

Speech Synthesizer


Variation controlled by the Linguistic Generator

What to say

Content Planner

How to Say It

Sentence Planner

Surface Realizer

Prosody Assigner

What is Heard

Speech Synthesizer

Parametrized Variation

•  vary content and form easily depending on any factor (context, personality, social relationship)


Where do we get the parameters and models?

  Theories and Corpus Studies from Drama, Narratology, Human Dialog

  Psychology: Big Five Theory of Personality

  Sociolinguistics: Politeness Theory   Narrative Theory of Character


PERSONAGE Generator: BIG FIVE Theory

  Conscientiousness: Dutiful vs. impulsive   Emotional stability: Calm vs. anxious   Openness to experience: Imaginative vs. conventional   Agreeableness: Kind vs. unfriendly   Extraversion: Sociable, assertive vs. quiet


Personality in Language: Ear Snippets

  Example (Mehl et al., 2006)

Introvert Extravert

-  I don't know man, it is fine I was just saying I don't know. -  I was just giving you a hard time, so. -  I don't know. -  I will go check my e-mail. -  I said I will try to check my e-mail, ok.

- Oh, this has been happening to me a lot lately. Like my phone will ring. It won't say who it is. It just says call. And I answer and nobody will say anything. So I don't know who it is. -  Okay. I don't really want any but a little salad.


Some Linguistic Reflexes of Personality

  Extraversion (Furnham, 1990)   Talk more, faster, louder and more repetitively   Fewer pauses and hesitations   Lower type/token ratio   Less formal, more references to context (Heylighen & Dewaele, 2002)

  More positive emotion words (Pennebaker & King, 1999)   E.g. happy, pretty, good

  Neuroticism (Pennebaker & King, 1999)

  1st person singular pronouns   Negative emotion words

  Conscientiousness (Pennebaker & King, 1999)

  Fewer negations and negative emotion words

  Low but significant correlations


PERSONAGE Architecture: 67 Parameters

Realization

INPUT: Dialog Act, Content Pool

OUTPUT UTTERANCE

VERBOSITY

RESTATEMENTS

CONTENT POLARITY …

SYNTACTIC COMPLEXITY

SELF-REFERENCE …

CONTRAST: e.g. however, but JUSTIFY: e.g.

so, since

PERIOD …

EXCLAMATION

HEDGES: e.g. kind of, rather, basically, you know FILLED PAUSES: e.g. err…

SWEAR WORDS: e.g. damn

IN GROUP MARKERS: e.g. pal

STUTTERING: e.g. Ri-Ri-River TAG QUESTIONS

…

FREQUENCY OF USE

WORD LENGTH

VERB STRENGTH

Content Planner

Pragmatic Marker

Insertion

Lexical Choice

Aggregation

Syntactic Template Selection


Example of Pragmatic Transformation

  Negation insertion   “X has awful food” “X doesn’t have good food”

Wok Mania class: proper noun

number: sg

have class: verb

awful class:adjective

food class: noun number: sg

article: none

Obj Subj

ATTR

WordNet Database

Look for antonym

“good”

- Negate verb - Replace adjective by antonym Wok Mania

class: proper noun number: sg

have class: verb

negated: true

good class:adjective

food class: noun number: sg

article: none

Obj Subj

ATTR


Recommendation: A Persuasive Task

Alt Realization Extra

5 Err... it seems to me that Le Marais isn’t as bad as the others. 1.83

4 Right, I mean, Le Marais is the only restaurant that is any good. 2.83

8 Ok, I mean, Le Marais is a quite french, kosher and steak house place, you know and the atmosphere isn’t nasty, it has nice atmosphere. It has friendly service. It seems to me that the service is nice. It isn’t as bad as the others, is it?

5.17

9 Well, it seems to me that I am sure you would like Le Marais. It has good food, the food is sort of rather tasty, the ambience is nice, the atmosphere isn’t sort of nasty, it features rather friendly servers and its price is around 44 dollars.

5.83

3 I am sure you would like Le Marais, you know. The atmosphere is acceptable, the servers are nice and it’s a french, kosher and steak house place. Actually, the food is good, even if its price is 44 dollars.

6.00

10 It seems to me that Le Marais isn’t as bad as the others. It’s a french, kosher and steak house place. It has friendly servers, you know but it’s somewhat expensive, you know!

6.17

2 Basically, actually, I am sure you would like Le Marais. It features friendly service and acceptable atmosphere and it’s a french, kosher and steak house place. Even if its price is 44 dollars, it just has really good food, nice food.

6.17


Training and Evaluation: Human Perceptions

  Three methods   Rule Based (Mairesse&Walker07, Mairesse &

Walker UMUAI 2010)  Overgenerate and Rank (Langkilde&Knight98)   Parameter Estimation (Mairesse&Walker08)


Corpus Annotation: 3 Human Judges (Ten-Item Personality Inventory, Gosling et al. 03)

Extraversion = 3.5 Neuroticism = 2.0

Agreeableness = 6.5 Conscient. = 4.0 Openness = 1.5


7.0 6.5 6.0 5.5 5.0 4.5 4.0 3.5 3.0 2.5 2.0 1.5 1.0

Extraversion rating

40

30

20

10

0

Utt

eran

ce

coun

t

Extravert Introvert

Rule-Based Extraversion Generation

  Use correlations in literature to set parameters   Significant perceptual differences p < .01   As binary classification, 90% accuracy


Third Method: Parameter Estimation Models (ACL’08)

  Data: 160 randomly generated utterances + generation decisions+ ratings

  Training Multiple Continuous Parameters Models   Independence assumption between parameters   Best regression models selected through cross-validation

  Example: CONTENT POLARITY

CONTENT POLARITY = - 0.102 x emotional stability + 0.970 x agreeableness - 0.110 x conscientiousness + 0.013 x openness to experience + 0.054


Utterances express *multiple* personality traits


Naïve Subjects Evaluation Experiment

  24 subjects rated 50 utterances   Each utterance hits a combination of

Big Five targets

  Correlation between target scores and average ratings

Extraversion = 3.5 Neuroticism = 1.7

Agreeableness = 6.5 Conscientiousn. = 4.0

Openness = 4.5


So where are we?

  A flexible, real-time, generator   Socially relevant & Personality parameters   Methods for automatically training   Personage trained for ‘Big Five personality’ but could

train to optimize other feedback measure, e.g. dramatic character

  Personalize both content and form   Standard meaning representations: DB Relations,

Content Plan, AI planner



Can we use findings from psychology about PERSONALITY and VOICE and FACE and GESTURE?


Alfred Experiment: Facial Dominance Behaviors & Linguistic Personality

Disagreeable, Hi Dominance Extravert, Low Dominance

Bossy or Wimpy: Expressing Social Dominance by Combining Gaze and Linguistic Behaviors (Bee, Pollack, Andre’ & Walker, Intelligent Virtual Agents 2010)

Hypoth: Persuasiveness could be increased by expressing dominance with personality (Marwell, 1967, Mehrabian, 1995)


Alfred Experiment: Gaze & Personality



Intelligent Virtual Agents, 2010 Michael Neff, Yingying Wang(UCD), Rob Abbott, Marilyn Walker(UCSC)


Introversion Extraversion

Body attitude backward leaning, turning away forward leaning

Gesture amplitude narrow wide, broad

Gesture rate low high more movements of head, hands and legs

Gesture speed, response time

slow fast

Gesture direction more inward, self-contact more outward, table-plane and horizontal spreading gesture

Gesture connection low smoothness, rhythm disturbance

smooth, fluent

Body part shoulder erect, limbs spread, elbows away from body, hands away from body, legs apart

(References in paper)


Rate: (on seven point scale) 1. Extraverted, enthusiastic: o o o o o o o 2. Reserved, quiet: o o o o o o o 3. Naturalness o o o o o o o


Mary: Gesture & Personality


So where are we now?

  Voice realization maintains personality perceptions   Methodology of carefully mining social psychology

literature for parameters appears to be extendable to gaze, head position, body and arm gestures



Aren’t there aspects of characters or agents that aren’t captured by personality parameters?

What about all those things that authors and screenwriters know?


Character In Film: One utterance tells it all


Spy Feet: A Social Outdoor Role Playing Exercise Game

  WORK in PROGRESS!!   A Role Playing Game (a mystery) to make exercise fun   Technical Aim: Automatic story character generation,

User adaptation


So You’ve decided to Play Spy Feet!

  SpyFeet is a mystery game full of intrigue and exercise! Suspense and Natural Language Generation! Mystical Animal Companions and RPG elements!

  When the user begins play for the first time, they will immediately be presented with a hurriedly written text message from Aunt Elspeth informing the player that danger is afoot, and asks the player to seek out Sparrow. At this point, the player receives the journey “Call to Adventure.”

  Grail GM: Role Playing Game (RPG) manager provides dynamic intelligent plot point selection (Sullivan, Mateas & Wardrip-Fruin 2010)

  There is an evil protagonist Dr. Cartmill you must foil!


SpyFeet Interface

Animal Portrait Will eventually reflect mood May animate (Neff)

List of Topics Characters/Ideas to ask the Spirit Includes prompting for new topics Interact through tapping

Interactions cost Warden Energy Gained through exercise Restricts dialogue

Dialogue Presentation Q&A Format -- real dialogue


Method to identify requirements/parameters

  Creative   Write a sketch of each character’s personality using your

own words   Describe each character in terms of Big Five Traits   Ask writer to write sample plot points for all five

characters

  Technical:   Analyze authored utterances to see how they differ across

the five characters   Identify Personage parameters we can use, and where we

might need new ones.


Fix the Authoring Bottleneck


First Characterization: Animal Spirits

  Otter (playful, clown, joker)   Sparrow (spy, flighty, gossiper)   Tiger Beetle (crafty, sneaky, greedy, clingy)   Tortoise (slow, steady, wise, spiritual, tenacious)   Wolf (predatory, tracker, hunter, pack, serious)


But do we have enough parameters yet?

“Almost all the literature of character – whether [nonfiction] or fiction, drama or biography – proceeds on the psychological assumption that each character has certain traits peculiar to himself which can be defined through the narrating of typical episodes from life.” (Allport, 1960)

Gordon Allport 1897-1967


Tortoise Character: Big Five

  General traits: steadfast, wise, plodding, thinker, spiritual, tenacious, elderly

  Extroversion: 2 - quiet, reserved, solitary   Emotional Stability: 7 - calm, even-tempered, reliable, peaceful,

confident   Agreeableness: 5 - trustworthy, considerate   Conscientiousness: 7 - competent, disciplined, dutiful, deliberate,

careful   Openness: 5 - intellectual, cultured   Sample utterances

  Well, then. It seems to me that Sparrow would have the response to your inquiry.   Ahhh, child. You have returned. What news do you bring?   Tiger Beetle may yet have the answer, but be wary of his words, as they can be

misleading.


Dialogue Acts in Hand-Authored Utterances

Classification

Sentence Classification Hello there. Hello? Hey. Hi. Greet-Hello (x4)

I can see that you're new to this. Observation-Newbie

Look down. Suggest-Look-Around

The small brown bird? Clarification-Object That's me. Greet-Self-Statement Timothy J. Sparrow, at your service. Greet-Name-Introduction

Currently introducing highly specific acts

The same classification <=> completely interchangeable

Example: "Greet-Hello" Spectrum of Formality "Yo" "Sup" "Hi" "Hello" "Greetings" "Salutations"


Content Selection

  Personage has Polarity Scale for positive/negative content   In restaurant domain, low polarity are negative facts about an utterance   SpyFeet: New scales to control content selection based on relationship

and attitude to the player


“Go to X because Y is at X”

  Sparrow   Let's see... Yeah, since I think the villain is sort of at UC

Santa Cruz, head to it, you should race to it!   Oh since I think the villain is kind of at UC Santa Cruz,

head to it.   Yeah, actually, I think the villain is at UC Santa Cruz. Head

to it, you need to race to it.

  Wolf   Please oh God race to UC Santa Cruz!   Race to UC Santa Cruz!   Oh God you need to race to UC Santa Cruz!


“Stop Cartmill Because Cartmill is Evil”

  Tortoise (long sentences, hedges)   Maybe you would be interested in knowing that Cartmill cannot be

permitted to continue, unfortunately.   How can one man be so evil? Unfortunately, actually, you need to stop

Cartmill.   The dreams of Cartmill are the stuff of nightmares. End the machinations of

the doctor.

  Otter (mild swear words, disfluencies, verbosity)   How can really one man be so evil? You must thwart Cartmill pup.   Pull up the root of Cartmill's schemes. No one is darn worse than Cartmill!   Well, mmhm... no one is worse than Cartmill, so Cartmill cannot be

permitted to continue.   Oh gosh ok, Cartmill cannot be permitted to continue, so Cartmill reeks of

evil.


“Hello, how are you?”

  Sparrow (repetitions param)   Yeah, basically, hi. How are you?   Ok, right, hey. What's happenin'?   Ok, hi. Mmhm... how are you?   I see, I mean, hello there. How's it hangin'?   Ok, hey. How are you, how have you been.   Oh hi. How's it hangin'? How have you been?

  Tortoise (Hedges BUGS!!)   Great, you might be interested in knowing that hey. How's it

hangin'?   Hi, unfortunately. How have you been?


Summary

  Dialogue Systems have a personality whether you design it in or not

  Interesting and useful to be able to control it   May help achieve many conversational goals

  Future work:   More on characters   Would be interested in using this in human robot

interaction?

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Come Visit !! University of California Santa Cruz

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