An Affect-Enriched Dialogue Act Classification Model for Task-Oriented Dialogue

Kristy Boyer,  Joseph Grafsgaard,  Eun Young Ha,  Robert Phillips,  James Lester
North Carolina State University


Abstract

Dialogue act classification is a central challenge for dialogue systems. Although the importance of emotion in human dialogue is widely recognized, most dialogue act classification models make limited or no use of affective channels to aid in dialogue act classification. This paper presents a novel affect-enriched dialogue act classifier for task-oriented dialogue that models facial expressions of users, in particular, facial expressions related to confusion. The findings indicate that the affect-enriched classifiers perform significantly better for distinguishing user REQUESTS FOR FEEDBACK and GROUNDING dialogue acts. The results point to ways in which dialogue systems can leverage affective channels to improve dialogue act classification.




Full paper: http://www.aclweb.org/anthology/P/P11/P11-1119.pdf