Coordination in Conversation and Rapport

We investigate the role of increasing friendship in dialogue, and propose a first step towards a computational model of the role of long-term relationships in language use between humans and embodied conversational agents. Data came from a study of friends and strangers, who either could or could not see one another, and who were asked to give directions to one-another, three subsequent times. Analysis focused on differences in the use of dialogue acts and non-verbal behaviors, as well as cooccurrences of dialogue acts, eye gaze and head nods, and found a pattern of verbal and nonverbal behavior that differentiates the dialogue of friends from that of strangers, and differentiates early acquaintances from those who have worked together before. Based on these results, we present a model of deepening rapport which would enable an ECA to begin to model patterns of human relationships.