Dialogue Game Research Articles

Towards Encoding of the Transition Relation in Dialogue Games Model Checking

Towards Encoding of the Transition Relation in Dialogue Games Model Checking

A criança com autismo na brinquedoteca: percursos de interação e linguagem

Este artigo tem como objetivo apresentar os resultados de análises de um estudo de caso sobre modos de interação estabelecidos entre uma criança com autismo e os adultos em uma brinquedoteca. Apoia-se nos estudos de Lev Semenovitch Vigotski e Mikhail Bakhtin, que abordam o papel da linguagem na constituição da consciência e enfocam os processos de significação que subjazem aos processos interativos. Os dados foram registrados por meio de filmagem, gravação em áudio e anotações em diário de campo em uma brinquedoteca universitária, que atendia crianças com e sem deficiência, contando para isso com a participação de graduandos do curso de Educação Física, docentes da universidade e uma psicóloga. As análises foram desenvolvidas de forma a compreender os processos interativos estabelecidos entre um menino com autismo de dois anos e oito meses, que não apresenta uma linguagem articulada, e dois adultos. As análises indicaram que a criança interage com adultos, utilizando recursos não verbais, os quais são significados por eles, o que permite manter a interação e enriquecer as possibilidades de interlocução. O estudo conclui que, mesmo não tendo uma fala articulada, essa criança se constitui como um sujeito em condições de se posicionar de forma ativa e responsiva nos processos interativos estabelecidos com os adultos. Nesse processo, o papel do adulto é fundamental de forma a criar condições favoráveis à participação da criança no jogo dialógico.

Abduction in argumentation frameworks

This paper studies abduction in abstract argumentation frameworks. Given an argument, an agent verifies whether the argument is justified or not in its argumentation framework. If the argument is not justified in the argumentation framework, the agent seeks conditions to explain the justification state by hypothesising arguments in the universal argumentation framework. We formulate such abductive reasoning in argumentation semantics and provide its computation in logic programming. We also apply abduction to enforcement and simple dialogue games in argumentation frameworks.

Dummetova koncepcija kao teorija značenja za Hintikkin tip semantike teorije igre (III)

With the analysis of the key terms such as truth/use, proof - verification, falsification, inductive probability/semantic probability, winning/losing, winning strategy, it is shown that Dummett’s general theory of meaning does not include Hintikka’s game theory, that it, the conception of the winning strategy. The difference between them arises from the different understanding of Wittgenstein's idea about language games and from their attitudes toward theoretical proof theory. Hintikka’s semantic games about exploration of the world do not reject the bivalence principle but he gives it a different characteristic - one of the two players always has a winning strategy. Looking at Dummett’s philosophical theory of meaning and the most recent Hintikka’s suggestion about general information - seeking through questioning and answering, the author establishes that Dummett’s falsificational and dialogical games as well as Hintikka’s semantic games are subparts of Hintikka’s general information - seeking game Thus Dummett’s statement that Hintikka’s semantic games can be subsumed under Dummett’s conception is rejected and thus the answer is partly given to Saarinen’s suggestion that new affinity should be established. Apart from the comparison of these views with the outline of possible Wittgenstein’s general theory of meaning as rule - testing, together with his treatment (although not always adequate) of verification/falsification, inductive probability and čonfirmation/corroboration, the advantage of Wittgenstein’s view is affirmed.

On Dialogue Games and Graph Games

Dialogue games were introduced by Melliès as an attempt to unify two historical paradigms of game semantics: concrete data structures and arena games. The definition of dialogue games relies on the idea that a move m of an arena game can be decomposed as a pair m=(α,v) consisting of a cell α and of a value v. Consequently, a dialogue game is defined as a quadripartite forest whose nodes are separated into four classes: Opponent cells, Opponent values, Player cells, Player values. Although the translation from arena games to dialogue games is essentially immediate, the relationship between dialogue games and concrete data structures is more intricate. In order to clarify it, we study the relationship between dialogue games and graph games which were introduced by Hyland and Schalk to provide a graph-theoretic account of Berry and Curien's sequential algorithm model. We construct a fully faithful functor from a category of dialogue games to the category of graph games and conflict-free strategies. This leads us to an alternative definition of conflict-free strategies in graph games as balanced and bi-invariant strategies in dialogue games.

The language of Akan herbal drug sellers and advertisers

Abstract This paper addresses the language and pragmatic strategies used by Akan herbal drug sellers to persuade would-be-buyers. It adopts the theoretical framework of Weigand’s Mixed Game Model (MGM) and defines persuasion as a variable of competence-in-performance, and language use as the basis of dialogic interaction. It investigates how sellers employ politeness, honorifics, humour, digression, personification, proverbs, metaphors and hyperbole in dialogic action games. The herbal drug sellers are grouped into three: (a) those normally plying on Ghana’s major roads and at bus stations, (b) those who are on radio and TV and (c) those who advertise on radio and TV. We will discuss excerpts of five recordings in the Akan language and translated into English.

A Formal Model of an Argumentative Dialogue in the Management of Emotions

In this research, we focus on designing an interactive tool which will be used as an aid in learning how to manage emotions during argumentative dialogues. To this end, a collection of examples illustrating the typical human’s reactions was collated and used to explain mechanisms that appear in dialogues. We present a theoretical background of the project, i.e., a formal system to represent the change of intensity of emotions in argumentative dialogues. We rely here on persuasive dialogue games. A formal language for expressing properties of protocols for dialogues with emotional reasoning is proposed. We suggest that awareness of emotions improves communication between parents and children, and that it is an important element of both raising communication skills in adults and development of communication skills in children.

A Critical Discussion Game for Prohibiting Fallacies

The study of fallacies is at the heart of argumentation studies. In response to Hamblin’s devastating critique of the state of the theory of fallacies in 1970, both formal dialectical and informal approaches to fallacies developed. In the current paper, we focus on an influential informal approach to fallacies, part of the pragma-dialectical theory of argumentation. Central to the pragma-dialectical method for analysing and evaluating argumentative discourse is the ideal model of a critical discussion. In this discussion model, a dialectical perspective on argumentation is combined with a pragmatic take on communicative interaction. By formalising and computationally implementing the model of a critical discussion, we take a first step in the development of software to computationally model argumentative dialogue in which fallacies are prohibited along the pragmadialectical norms. We do this by defining the Critical Discussion Game, a formal dialogue game based on the pragma-dialectical discussion model, executable on an online user-interface which is part of a larger infrastructure of argumentation software.

Interactive Fictional Dialogue Games as Arts-Based Research

Abstract Using an interactive fictional dialogue game as an example, I argue that digital games are an artful way to represent research such that creating interactive digital games can be seen as an art-making process and likewise a way to analyze and understand research data. The interactive fictional dialogue game featured herein constitutes arts-based research (ABR) focusing on new media as the art medium. First, I discuss fiction writing as arts-based research practice to establish the possibilities and range of ABR. Then, I extend the concept of fiction writing to incorporate interactive fiction, a game genre, and discuss the potential of interactivity as the core characteristic of new media and new media-based scholarship. Further, through the example of a fictional dialogue game on avatar-making created using Twine, I argue that interactive fiction games are a kind of arts-based research.

HYPO\u2019S legacy: introduction to the virtual special issue

This paper is an introduction to a virtual special issue of AI and Law exploring the legacy of the influential HYPO system of Rissland and Ashley. The papers included are: Arguments and cases: An inevitable intertwining, BankXX: Supporting legal arguments through heuristic retrieval, Modelling reasoning with precedents in a formal dialogue Game, A note on dimensions and factors, An empirical investigation of reasoning with legal cases through theory construction and application, Automatically classifying case texts and predicting outcomes, A factor-based definition of precedential constraint and An improved factor based approach to precedential constraint. After describing HYPO, in this introduction to the special issue I look at various aspects of its influence on AI and Law: the developments led by Rissland at Amherst; the developments led by Ashley in Pittsburgh; the expression of these ideas in terms of rule based systems, and their subsequent formalisation; value based theories, which were inspired by a critique of HYPO; and contemporary approaches which revive the idea of dimensions.

O paradigma latino americano da jurisdição indígena e o panorama brasileiro

O mundo mudou. A sociedade encontra-se numa era repleta de comunicações interligadas em um nível hipercomplexo - os fenômenos sociais podem apresentar-se das mais variadas formas aos mais variados ordenamentos jurídicos. Na América Latina o processo não foi outro. Com a ascensão do chamado “Novo Constitucionalismo Latino-Americano”, fundado em preceitos democráticos, integrativos e participativos, novas formas de governo foram surgindo – o velho Estado Republicano, Colonial, com um povo, território e governo, feneceu. O multiculturalismo, a plurinacionalidade e os mais variados jogos dialogais jurídicos ganharam voz diante da extirpação da mordaça do monocentralismo. Ao exemplo da Bolívia e do Equador, os povos indígenas, que antes sequer eram reconhecidos constitucionalmente como povos desses Estados, agora possuem autonomia e são capazes de gerenciar e resolver seus próprios conflitos. Nessa senda, é necessário analisar o panorama brasileiro, tendo em vista que muitos povos indígenas não têm voz para se autodeterminar – o “homem branco” ainda busca intervir ao que está em seu alcance. Assim sendo, é imperioso repensar a situação nacional, utilizando da teoria do Transconstitucionalismo como forma de manter uma conversação constitucional para resolução de conflitos entre o direito indígena e o ordenamento jurídico estatal.

The Effects of a Digital Dialogue Game on Higher Education Students' Argumentation-Based Learning

The Effects of a Digital Dialogue Game on Higher Education Students' Argumentation-Based Learning

Lakatos-style collaborative mathematics through dialectical, structured and abstract argumentation

The simulation of mathematical reasoning has been a driving force throughout the history of Artificial Intelligence research. However, despite significant successes in computer mathematics, computers are not widely used by mathematicians apart from their quotidian applications. An oft-cited reason for this is that current computational systems cannot do mathematics in the way that humans do. We draw on two areas in which Automated Theorem Proving (ATP) is currently unlike human mathematics: firstly in a focus on soundness, rather than understandability of proof, and secondly in social aspects. Employing techniques and tools from argumentation to build a framework for mixed-initiative collaboration, we develop three complementary arcs. In the first arc – our theoretical model – we interpret the informal logic of mathematical discovery proposed by Lakatos, a philosopher of mathematics, through the lens of dialogue game theory and in particular as a dialogue game ranging over structures of argumentation. In our second arc – our abstraction level – we develop structured arguments, from which we induce abstract argumentation systems and compute the argumentation semantics to provide labelings of the acceptability status of each argument. The output from this stage corresponds to a final, or currently accepted proof artefact, which can be viewed alongside its historical development. Finally, in the third arc – our computational model – we show how each of these formal steps is available in implementation. In an appendix, we demonstrate our approach with a formal, implemented example of real-world mathematical collaboration. We conclude the paper with reflections on our mixed-initiative collaborative approach.

A Conventional Dialogue Model Based on Dialogue Patterns

Our work aims at designing a dialogue manager dedicated to agents that interact with humans. In this article, we investigate how dialogue patterns at the dialogue act level extracted from Human-Human interactions can be fruitfully used by a software agent to interact with a human.We show how these patterns can be leveraged via a dialogue game structure in order to benefit to the dialogue management process of an agent. We describe how empirically specified dialogue games can be employed on both interpretative and generative levels of dialogue management. We present Dogma, an open-source module that can be used by an agent to manage its conventional communicative behaviour. We show that our library of dialogue games can be used into Dogma to generate fragments of dialogue that are strongly coherent from a human perspective.

A micrological study of negation

Tensorial logic is a primitive logic of tensor and negation which refines linear logic by relaxing the hypothesis that linear negation is involutive. Thanks to this mild modification, tensorial logic provides a type-theoretic account of game semantics where innocent strategies are portrayed as temporal refinements of traditional proof-nets in linear logic. In this paper, we study the algebraic and combinatorial structure of negation in a non-commutative variant of tensorial logic. The analysis is based on a 2-categorical account of dialogue categories, which unifies tensorial logic with linear logic, and discloses a primitive symmetry between proofs and anti-proofs. The micrological analysis of tensorial negation reveals that it can be decomposed into a series of more elementary components: an adjunction L⊣R between the left and right negation functors L and R; a pair of linear distributivity laws κ▪ and κ▪ which refines the linear distributivity law between ⊗ and ⅋ in linear logic, and generates the Opponent and Proponent views of innocent strategies between dialogue games; a pair of axiom and cut combinators adapted from linear logic; an involutive change of frame (−)⁎ reversing the point of view of Prover and of Denier on the logical dispute, and reversing the polarity of moves in the dialogue game associated to the tensorial formula.

Considering students’ epistemic beliefs to facilitate their argumentative discourse and attitudinal change with a digital dialogue game

This study explores whether and how higher education students with various epistemic beliefs engage in argumentative discourse and shift their attitude within a digital dialogue game. Students were assigned to groups of four or five and asked to argue and explore various perspectives of four controversial issues of environmental education in four consecutive weeks that each lasted 90 min. The results showed the digital dialogue game can guide students towards a desired mode of interaction and argumentative discourse. Students’ epistemic beliefs were seen to be an important factor for their attitudinal change. Furthermore, students’ epistemic beliefs contributed to their style and frequency of particular types of argumentative discourse. Multiplists engaged in argumentative discourse activities differently than Evaluativists during the argumentative discourse. Explanations for these results, implications, limitations and suggestions for future work are provided.

Pragmatic question answering: A game-theoretic approach

We present results of quantitative evaluations of a content selection scheme for answer generation in sales dialogue which is based on an interactive game-theoretic model of the dialogue scenario. The model involves representing a probability distribution over possible customer requirements, i.e., needs that must be met before a customer will agree to buy an object. Through game-theoretic analysis we derive a content selection procedure which constitutes an optimal strategy in the dialogue game. This procedure is capable of producing pragmatically appropriate indirect answers to yes/no questions, and is implemented in an online question answering system. Evaluation results show that these answers are pragmatically natural and contribute to dialogue efficiency. The model allows for systems that learn probabilities of customer requirements, both online and from previous data.

Speech Acts in a Dialogue Game Formalisation of Critical Discussion

In this paper a dialogue game for critical discussion is developed. The dialogue game is a formalisation of the ideal discussion model that is central to the pragma-dialectical theory of argumentation. The formalisation is intended as a preparatory step to facilitate the development of computational tools to support the pragma-dialectical study of argumentation. An important dimension of the pragma-dialectical discussion model is the role played by speech acts. The central issue addressed in this paper is how the speech act perspective can be accommodated in the formalisation as a dialogue game. The starting point is an existing ‘basic’ dialogue game for critical discussion, in which speech acts are not addressed. The speech act perspective is introduced into the dialogue game by changing the rules that govern the moves that can be made and the commitments that these result in, while the rules for the beginning, for the end, and for the structure of the dialogue game remain unchanged. The revision of the move rules is based on the distribution of speech acts in the pragma-dialectical discussion model. The revision of the commitment rules is based on the felicity conditions that are associated with those speech acts.

Impacts of a Digital Dialogue Game and Epistemic Beliefs on Argumentative Discourse and Willingness to Argue

<p class="Body">The goal of this study was to explore how students debate with their peers within a designed context using a digital dialogue game, and whether their epistemic beliefs are significant to the outcomes. Epistemic beliefs are known to colour student interactions within argumentative discourse, leading some students to hold back from interactions. By designing an online small group activity based around an issue both important and controversial to the students, with multiple viewpoints in each group and with the scaffolding provided by a dialogue game, it was examined whether these epistemic effects were still evident within their argumentative discourse. Furthermore, the study examined whether the activity design improves students' willingness to argue with each other, and their openness to attitudinal change. A pretest, posttest design was used with students who were assigned to groups of four or five and asked to argue on a controversial topic. Their aim was to explore various perspectives and to debate the pros and cons of the use of Genetically Modified Organisms (GMOs). While previous research has shown that some epistemic beliefs lead to less critical engagement with peers, the results presented here demonstrate that activity design is also an important factor in successful engagement within argumentative discourse.</p>

Investigating and Promoting Trainee Science Teachers’ Conceptual Change of the Nature of Science with Digital Dialogue Games ‘InterLoc’

The purpose of this study is to explore how an online-structured dialogue environment supported (OSDE) collaborative learning about the nature of science among a group of trainee science teachers in the UK. The software used (InterLoc) is a linear text-based tool, designed to support structured argumentation with openers and ‘dialogue moves’. A design-based research approach was used to investigate multiple sessions using InterLoc with 65 trainee science teachers. Five participants who showed differential conceptual change in terms of their Nature of Science (NOS) views were purposively selected and closely followed throughout the study by using key event recall interviews. Initially, the majority of participants held naive views of NOS. Substantial and favourable changes in these views were evident as a result of the OSDE. An examination of the development of the five participants’ NOS views indicated that the effectiveness of the InterLoc discussions was mediated by cultural, cognitive, and experiential factors. The findings suggest that InterLoc can be effective in promoting reflection and conceptual change.