Discourse Particles and User Characteristics in Naturalistic Human-Computer Interaction

In human-human interaction (HHI) the behaviour of the speaker is amongst others characterised by semantic and prosodic cues. These short feedback signals minimally communicate certain dialogue functions such as attention, understanding or other attitudinal reactions. Human-computer interaction (HCI) systems have failed to note and respond to these details so far, resulting in users trying to cope with and adapt to the machines behaviour. In order to enhance HCI, an adaptation to the user's behaviour, individual skills, and the integration of a general human behaviour understanding is indispensable. Another issue is the question if the usage of feedback signals is influenced by the user's individuality. In this paper, we investigate the influence of specific feedback signals, known as discourse particles (DPs), with communication style and psychological characteristics within a naturalistic HCI. This investigation showed that there is a significant difference in the usage of DPs for users of certain user characteristics.