Exploring the characteristics of multi-party dialogues

Abstract

This paper describes novel results on the characteristics of three-party dialogues by quantitatively comparing them with those of two-party. In previous dialogue research, two-party dialogues are mainly focussed because data collection of multi-party dialogues is difficult and there are very few theories handling them, although research on multi-party dialogues is expected to be of much use in building computer supported collaborative work environments and computer assisted instruction systems. In this paper, firstly we describe our data collection method of multi-party dialogues using a meeting scheduling task, which enables us to compare three-party dialogues with those of two party. Then we quantitively compare these two kinds of dialogues such as the number of characters and turns and patterns of information exchanges. Lastly we show that patterns of information exchanges in speaker alternation and initiative-taking can be used to characterise three-party dialogues.