The progressive neuropathology involved in dementia frequently causes a gradual decline in communication skills. Communication partners who are unaware of the specific communication problems faced by people with dementia (PWD) can inadvertently challenge their conversation partner, leading to distress and a reduced flow of information between speakers. Previous research has produced an extensiv...

This paper discusses the use of natural language or „conversational‟ agents in e-learning environments. We describe and contrast the various applications of conversational agent technology represented in the e-learning literature, including tutors, learning companions, language practice and systems to encourage reflection. We offer two more detailed examples of conversational agents, one which ...

Polite behavior in intelligent conversational systems requires mixed-initiative dialog. AutoTutor is an intelligent tutoring system in which several of these conversational skills are implemented. This paper discusses some aspects of mixed-initiative dialog, as implemented in AutoTutor ranging from discourse markers, dialog moves and speech acts to question answering. In addition some of the st...

Neural networks can be successfully used for the classification of dysphasic subjects based on their conversational speech using a set of linguistic measures. I shall illustrate the approach with particular reference to its application in classifying agrammatic patients. Linguistic measures can be applied to the transcribed texts of conversational speech of both normal and agrammatic subjects a...

A dialogue game is presented that enables us to generate coherent elementary conversational sequences at the speech act level. Central to the approach is that the cognitive states of players change as a result of the interpretation of speech acts and that these changes provoke the production of a subsequent speech act. It will be shown that the structure and the coherence of conversational unit...