ERDA : An Empathic Rational Dialog Agent1 Magalie Ochs (1),(2), Catherine Pelachaud (1) and David Sadek (2) (1) IUT de Montreuil, University Paris VIII, France (2) France Telecom R&D, France

ERDA : An Empathic Rational Dialog Agent2 Overview Motivation and Objectives Rational Dialog Agent Corpora Description A Coding Scheme for Annotating Emotion Elicitation Results of the Annotation Perspectives and Future Work

ERDA : An Empathic Rational Dialog Agent3 Motivation and Objectives (1/3) Expressions of empathic emotions enhance human- machine interaction [Brave et al., 2005] [Klein et al., 1999] [Partala et al., 2004][Prendinger et al., 2005] Empathy: capacity to "put your-self in someone else's shoes" [Poggi, 2004]

ERDA : An Empathic Rational Dialog Agent4 Motivation and Objectives (2/3) Empathic Agent Simulate the process of user's emotion elicitation User's emotion Expression of the emotion To know the circumstances under which user’s emotions are triggered

ERDA : An Empathic Rational Dialog Agent5 Motivation and Objectives (3/3) Objective: To identify under which circumstances a dialog agent should express empathic emotions To identify under which circumstances a user may potentially feel emotion when interacting with a dialog agent Method proposed: To analyze real human-machine dialogs that lead a user to express emotion

ERDA : An Empathic Rational Dialog Agent6 Rational Dialog Agent ) Model of agent based on a formal theory of Interaction (Rational Interaction Theory) BDI-approach: Agent's mental state composed of Beliefs and Intentions. Model of Communicative Acts:  Based on speech act theory and BDI approach  Description of feasibility preconditions and rational effects in terms of mental attitudes (belief and intention). [Sadek, 1991]

ERDA : An Empathic Rational Dialog Agent7 Corpora Description Real vocal human-machine dialogs corpora Dialogs derived from two vocal applications developed at France Telecom: PlanResto & Dialogue Bourse Users interact in natural language with rational dialog agent Dialogs annotated by two labels of emotion (positive and negative) (two annotators)

ERDA : An Empathic Rational Dialog Agent8 A Coding Scheme for Annotating Emotion Elicitation (1/5) To analyze the features of the dialogs that lead a user to express emotion A coding scheme to annotate the sequence of events that lead to user's expression of emotion Tags of the coding scheme Relevant features of an emotion eliciting-event Computational description

ERDA : An Empathic Rational Dialog Agent9 A Coding Scheme for Annotating Emotion Elicitation (2/5) Consequences of an event on a user's goal:  Goal achievement  Goal failure Causes of goal failure:  Unfeasibility by the agent of the user's goal  Belief conflict on the user's goal  Goal conflict  Transfer of information on the feasibility of the goal Tags of the coding scheme

ERDA : An Empathic Rational Dialog Agent10 Description of tags in terms of mental attitudes (Beliefs and Intentions) Sequence of tags – Condition of Emotion Elicitation Particular mental state of a rational dialog agent Example : Belief conflict on a user's goal belief _conflict user (event, goal, agent) = def K user (Done(event,  I user (goal)  K agent (I user (goal))) A Coding Scheme for Annotating Emotion Elicitation (3/5)

ERDA : An Empathic Rational Dialog Agent11 A Coding Scheme for Annotating Emotion Elicitation (4/5) Inference of User's Mental State (based on Speech Act Theory):  Goals of the user by performing a communicative act: To achieve its intentional and perlocutory effects  Belief of the user: the enunciation of the communicative act enables to realize these goals Annotation of 20 dialogs (Intra-coder validity: re- annotation 1 month after) [Austin, 1962] [Searle, 1969]

ERDA : An Empathic Rational Dialog Agent12 A Coding Scheme for Annotating Emotion Elicitation (5/5) An example of annotated dialog extracted from PlanResto […] Agent : What are you looking for? User: the Hippopotamus restaurant mmh in 14th urban district (event1) /* User's goal : G1 : Perlocutory effect : to know an hippopotamus restaurant in the 14th urban district G2 : Intentional effect : the agent knows the user's goal G1 */ Agent: A restaurant in 14th urban district. I have found more than a hundred. You can precise a speciality, for example specific type of food or budget […] User : mmh Agent: A Greek restaurant. […] EXPRESSION OF A NEGATIVE EMOTION

ERDA : An Empathic Rational Dialog Agent13 Results of the Annotation (1/2) Analyze 47 situations that lead a user to express emotion Main circumstance under which negative emotion is expressed: Goal failure (45 situations) Different causes of goal failure:  Belief Conflict (30 situations)  Goal Conflict (1 situation)  Transfer of information on the feasibility of the goal (5 situations)

ERDA : An Empathic Rational Dialog Agent14 Results of the Annotation (2/2) Several successive goal failures required to trigger user's expression of emotion (in average 2) Number of goal failures depends on:  The cause of the failure Goal conflict : 1 goal failure Belief conflict : 2 goal failures in average Transfer of information on the feasibility : 1 goal failure in average  If an emotion has already been elicited Other conditions of user's expression of negative emotion:  Belief Conflict (2 cases)  Goal Conflict (3 cases)

ERDA : An Empathic Rational Dialog Agent15 Perspectives and Future Work Analyze of non-acted human-machine dialogs that lead user to express emotions Identification of several circumstances under which a user potentially feels negative emotion Mental states of Conflicts Future Works: Subjective evaluation to validate the believability of the conditions of emotion elicitation identified