Daily Note: Augmented Communicators and Conversational Agency

These notes are a summary of concepts presented in “Conversational Agency in Augmentative and Alternative Communication.”

Stephanie Valencia, Amy Pavel, Jared Santa Maria, Seunga (Gloria) Yu, Jeffrey P. Bigham, and Henny Admoni. 2020. Conversational Agency in Augmentative and Alternative Communication. In Proceedings of the 2020 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI ’20). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, 1–12. https://doi.org/10.1145/3313831.3376376

1. Augmentative and Alternative Communication and Agency
   • Agency emerges from structure and constraints
   • Computer-mediated augmentative and alternative communication imposes unique challenges
   • Device improvements (e.g., text prediction, vocabulary sorting, customizable voices) enhance expressivity
   • Augmented communicator agency is shaped by technical and colloquial factors
   • Balancing constraints and partner participation is key to promoting agency
2. Sociological Perspective on Agency (David R Gibson)
   • Agency is exercised when conversational constraints loosen
   • Constraints include turn-taking, addressing, content, and cooperative expectations
3. Key Constraints in Augmentative and Alternative Communication and Task-Oriented Dialogue
   • Relationship constraints
     • Partner familiarity, comfort, and communication history
   • Device constraints
     • Throughput, input type, vocabulary, and feedback
   • Task constraints
     • Communication channel, output type, and information ownership
4. Role of Close Conversational Partners
   • Support augmented communicator agency by facilitating third-party communication
   • Increase information exchange through explanations and simplified questions
   • Can both support and inadvertently reduce technical agency
5. Expression of Agency in Conversation
   • Technical agency
     • Participating in the conversation
   • Colloquial agency
     • Advancing conversational objectives
6. Core Conversational Constraints
   • One-speaker constraint
     • Only one speaker at a time, disadvantaging augmented communicators
   • Relevance constraint
     • Limited time window for making relevant contributions
   • Participation shift constraint
     • Prior addressees are more likely to speak next, often bypassing augmented communicator
   • Ritual constraint
     • Maintaining social standing through considerate behaviors
7. Impact of Constraints on Partner Participation
   • Close conversational partners regulate turn-taking and topic dominance
   • Lifelong partners (e.g., parents) participate more than paid aides
   • Long partner turns can shrink augmented communicators’ response window (relevance constraint)
   • Utterance-level voice output helps augmented communicators hold the floor (one-speaker constraint)
8. Interaction Dynamics Between Augmented Communicators and Close Conversational Partners
   • Direct addressing by third parties increases augmented communicators contributions
   • Partners expand augmented communicators responses with explanations and follow-up questions
   • Ritual behaviors include asking permission and clarifying information
   • Increased partner participation may lead to missed contribution opportunities for augmented communicators users
9. Influence of Information Access
   • Close conversational partners provide informed participation when they hold task-relevant information
   • When augmented communicators uniquely hold information, close conversational partners actively retrieve it
     • Use of concise questioning (yes/no, short answer, follow-up) enhances efficiency
10. Enhancing Communication with Third Parties
    • Close conversational partners interpret augmented communicators’ unique communication traits
    • They open new communication paths beyond the augmentative and alternative communication device
    • Their facilitation encourages third-party elicitation of augmented communicator contributions
11. Strategies to Support Augmented Communicator Agency
    • Visual status displays (typing, idle, listening) inform conversation partners
    • Discrete cues (wearables, peripheral signals) signal intent to contribute
    • Leveraging additional context (audio, visuals) can shorten response delays
    • Bookmarking conversation segments preserves context for delayed responses
12. XII. Additional Constraints and Considerations
    • Relationship constraint
      • Augmented communicators adapt communication based on partner type
    • Device constraint
      • Output and input types affect speaking ability and effort
    • Task constraint
      • Close conversational partner support varies with access to necessary task information
    • Identifying conversational goals can inform strategies to support agency