IMPACT OF VARIABLE INITIATIVE ON A NATURAL-LANGUAGE DIALOG SYSTEM

Flexible spoken natural language dialog systems should permit variable initiative behaviour. This is behaviour where the task initiative can vary from strongly computer controlled to strongly user controlled or somewhere in between. Such behaviour allows a system to effectively communicate with both task novices and experts as well as users with intermediate levels of expertise. The paper outlines a mechanism for obtaining variable initiative behaviour and presents experimental results on the performance of an implemented system capable of variable initiative behaviour.