Multiparty Interactions Research Articles

Leerlingen aan het Woord

An ethnographic document of 'objet trouvé' nature was the starting point for this study: a school diary in two volumes, co-authored by two Dutch teenage girls in the early seventies, mostly during classes-in-progress. This lively collection of fieldnotes (texts, drawings, shrieks, written conversations) constructs an insider-relevant representation of what school is like, from class-to-class, day-to-day, year-to-year. The existence of this collusive document is itself a comment on our assumptions of what goes on in classrooms, what is heard and not heard, seen and not seen. I have selected two passages from "The Writ", as the girls called these unorthodox classroom data, that illustrate how current linguistic and educational paradigms, in embracing a 'conversational' view to learning and communication in school, underanalyze the complexity of multi-party interaction in social situations, both with respect to 'the' data that have to be accounted for and the analytic tools they use to account for them (cf. 'Where is the lesson in all this talk'; Van Dam van Isselt, 1995). The relevance of what is said is constructed in highly complex floors and collusive interactional positions (cf. Goffman, 1979, 'Footing'). In the first part of the paper, a refinement of hearer roles is central. In the second part, a different type of data is used: video-recordings of lessons in 'Dutch as a second language', taught to a group of refugee children recently arrived in the Netherlands. A close examination of these data shows that 'utterance that is not talk' is relevant to contexts of early socialization and language production (cf. Palloni, 1994). The main theme of the paper is that a dynamic notion of context is needed: as produced in real time on a moment-by-moment basis by the interpretative work of co-present parties. Two discourse models that partially fulfill these requirements and that could be adapted for the purpose are discussed: the Linguistic Discourse Model by Polanyi & Scha (Polanyi, 1988) and Van Kuppevelt's proposals for tracing the structure of narrative texts through underlying questions (Van Kuppevelt, 1995).

A comprehensive study of the complexity of multiparty interaction

A multiparty interaction is a set of I/O actions executed jointly by a number of processes, each of which must be ready to execute its own action for any of the actions in the set to occur. An attempt to participate in an interaction delays a process until all other participants are available. Although a relatively new concept, the multiparty interaction has found its way into a number of distributed programming languages and algebraic models of concurrency. In this paper, we present a taxonomy of languages for multiparty interaction that covers all proposals of which we are aware. Based on this taxonomy, we then present a comprehensive analysis of the computational complexity of the multiparty interaction scheduling problem, the problem of scheduling multiparty interactions in a given execution environment.

Fairness and hyperfairness in multi-party interactions

In this paper, a new fairness notion is proposed for languages with multi-party interactions as the sole interprocess synchronization and communication primitive. The main advantage of this fairness notion is the elimination of starvation occurring solely due to race conditions (i.e., ordering of independent actions). Also, this is the first fairness notion for such languages which is fully adequate with respect to the criteria presented in [2]. The paper defines the notion, proves its properties, and presents examples of its usefulness.

Enhancing the efficiency of multiparty interaction through computer mediation

People use various techniques to reduce the complexity of realtime multiparty conversational interaction. These techniques—formal meetings, for example—generally restrict the format of the interaction in an attempt to reduce the amount of control information which must be processed by each conversant. This allows the conversants to concentrate more on domain specific information but severely reduces the efficiency of interaction. Previous approaches to the design of computer-mediated interaction (CMI) systems have largely attempted to automate such mechanisms. This paper examines the current state of research in the area of CMI systems and suggests a new direction for research in this area based on the utilisation of control information to increase communicative efficiency. To demonstrate the practical application of these ideas, an initial design for a CMI system which uses the concept of virtual conversants is presented. The CMI system assumes the burden of processing control information and presents to each conversant: • • a two party interaction model for control information • • a multiparty interaction model for domain information.

Further discussion on increasing the efficiency of multiparty interaction

The question of facilitating more efficient communication in groups raises a number of important issues. The first issue is to try to understand more fully and design for the rich functionality of communication in a group context; in other words, we have to understand more fully what exactly we are trying to facilitate. There are three major approaches which provide useful frameworks for understanding group communication: speech-act theory, conversational analysis and discourse analysis. Speech-act theory is favoured by Novick and Walpole. Winograd (1987–1988) has developed a language/action perspective on group communication based on the speech act approach. The Coordinator system is a specific product, based on this approach, to support computer-mediated communication. Bowers and Churcher (1988) suggest instead an approach based on conversational analysis. Their main criticism of speech-act theory is that it is individualistic rather than interactional in approach. They argue that conversational analysis, developed by sociologists interested in the study of human conversation, is more appropriate. The third perspective, discourse analysis, was developed mainly by linguists. It is also interactional in approach, but is oriented to provide a more formally based description to account for the structure of interaction (Sinclair and Coulthard, 1975; Coulthard and Montgomery, 1981; Coulthard, 1985). There is thus a rich set of conceptual frameworks to choose from in studying group communication. Social psychologists have provided useful insights on group processes and the effect on these of manipulating features of the context in which the group works. The studies of particular relevance to Novick and Walpole's proposal concern manipulation of group communication architectures. These studies point to the value of more open communication structures, though there are many variables which need to be considered. Certain findings from these studies, however, suggest a productive role for the virtual conversant proposed by Novick and Walpole. It is clear that many individuals become peripheralised in group structures, and this can affect individual motivation and the group performance. The virtual conversant, suggested by Novick and Walpole, might help avoid wasteful marginalisation of individuals by allowing all individuals access to the central issues the group is tackling. This would be especially useful where individuals joined a group at different stages. It might also support subgroups within a large group in keeping track of the relevance of their ongoing work to overall group objectives and achievements. The virtual conversant could thus provide a useful aid to foster more effective group communication. The argument here is that the virtual conversant could be aid to, and not a replacement for, dynamic processes of group structuring. Novick and Walpole's article provides a well presented and stimulating perspective on problems of improving group efficiency. It opens up discussion on group communication structures and the role of the individual within the group. The authors propose a clear answer which provides a useful focus for debate. Their concern that we should exploit new technological opportunities to amplify group effectiveness is a good one. The key questions about how to achieve this are still very open, but there are rich conceptual and empirical resources which can be brought to bear on the problem.

Interactors

Interactors is a run-time environment for embedded real-time software, which adds concurrency to the C++ object-oriented language. Interactors allows sequential processes to interact synchronously or asynchronously, and provides user-definable multiparty interactions. Several forms of selective wait, inspired by Ada, are provided. Scheduling algorithms follow Carnegie-Mellon University's recommendations for implementing hard deadline scheduling. Concepts are illustrated by simple application examples: Producer/Consumer and Dining Philosophers. This paper concludes by a description of the current implementation.

Cooperating proofs for distributed programs with multiparty interactions

The paper presents a proof system for partial-correctness assertions for a language for distributed programs based on multiparty interactions as its interprocess communication and synchronization primitive. The system is a natural generalization of the cooperating proofs introduced for partial-correctness proofs of CSP programs.

Design by decomposition of multiparty interactions in Raddle87

article Design by decomposition of multiparty interactions in Raddle87 Share on Author: I. R. Forman Microelectronics and Computer Technology Corporation, Austin, Texas Microelectronics and Computer Technology Corporation, Austin, TexasView Profile Authors Info & Claims ACM SIGSOFT Software Engineering NotesVolume 14Issue 3May 1989 pp 2–10https://doi.org/10.1145/75200.75201Online:01 April 1989Publication History 8citation190DownloadsMetricsTotal Citations8Total Downloads190Last 12 Months2Last 6 weeks0 Get Citation AlertsNew Citation Alert added!This alert has been successfully added and will be sent to:You will be notified whenever a record that you have chosen has been cited.To manage your alert preferences, click on the button below.Manage my AlertsNew Citation Alert!Please log in to your account Save to BinderSave to BinderCreate a New BinderNameCancelCreateExport CitationPublisher SiteGet Access

Multiparty interactions for interprocess communication and synchronization

The authors consider the essential properties of a multiparty interaction construct which serves as a primitive for interprocess communication and synchronization in distributed programs. It is claimed that more general constructs, which violate the suggested properties, are appropriate for abstraction but should not be seen as a communication primitive, and that both facilities are needed. Several acceptability criteria are posed for multiparty interactions, and various possibilities for constructs satisfying these criteria are presented. These include introducing a novel kind of nondeterminism within the assignments of an interaction, weakening the synchronization among the participants in an interaction, and varying the number of participants in order to provide a high-level treatment of fault tolerance. >

Who's got the floor?

ABSTRACTThis study into the nature of “the floor” actually began as an open-ended inquiry into sex differences that might occur beyond the sentence level in the multi-party interaction of five informal committee meetings. Technical difficulties prompted the trying out of several different transcription displays, most of which failed to capture the “feel” of the interaction and each of which biased (in its own way) the perception of what had actually gone on. The type of unconventional display eventually used was intended to show the floor holder in the center of the page, flanked by co-occurring talk. Because there were many episodes for which a single floor holder could not be identified, the primary focus of the study shifted to the nature of the floor itself. Questions about sex differences became a secondary and succeeding focus.In the analysis, “floor” and “turn” were distinguished on the basis of “participant-sense” rather than technical criteria. Two kinds of floors were subjectively identified: F1, a singly developed floor; and F2, a collaborative venture where several people seemed to be either operating on the same wavelength or engaging in a free-for-all. The two kinds of floors were differentiated objectively by such features as quantity and frequency participation, language functions, number of nonturn utterances, overlaps, and pauses. There were indeed sex/language differences, but these were related to the type of floor being developed. Men took more and longer turns and did more of the joking, arguing, directing, and soliciting of responses F1 's. Turn length and frequency differences were neutralized in F2's, and certain language functions were used by women to a greater extent in F2's than in F1 's. (Conversational analysis, gender and language, qualitative research methodology.)