'Are you sure you're paying attention?' – 'Uh-huh'. Communicating understanding as a marker of attentiveness

Buschmeier H, Malisz Z, Wlodarczak M, Kopp S, Wagner P. 'Are you sure you're paying attention?' – 'Uh-huh'. Communicating understanding as a marker of attentiveness. In: Proceedings of INTERSPEECH 2011. International Speech Communication Association; 2011: 2057-2060.We report on the first results of an experiment designed to investigate properties of communicative feedback produced by non-attentive listeners in dialogue. Listeners were found to produce less feedback when distracted by an ancillary task. A decreased number of feedback expressions communicating understanding was a particularly reliable indicator of distractedness. We argue this finding could be used to facilitate recognition of attentional states in dialogue system users. Index Terms: communicative feedback; dialogue; distraction; engagement; attention; dual tas