Push-to-talk ain’t always bad! Comparing Different Interactivity Settings in Task-oriented Dialogue

Restrictions of interactivity in dialogue are often seen as having negative impact on the efficiency of the dialogue, as they affect the ability to give immediate feedback (Whittaker, 2003). We have conducted experiments with one such restriction common in spoken dialogue systems, namely push-totalk. While our results confirm many predictions from the literature (fewer but longer turns; reduction of positive feedback), we found no significant impact on task-efficiency. Our analysis of the grounding strategies of the subjects shows that the restriction actually induced a more cautious strategy that proved advantageous for our matching task, and that giving negative feedback in the form of clarification requests was not affected by the restriction.