Joint attention in spoken human-robot interaction [Elektronische Ressource] / vorgelegt von Maria Staudte

Joint AttentioninSpoken Human-Robot InteractionDissertationzur Erlangung des akademischen Grades einesDoktors der Philosophieder Philosophischen Fakultätender Universität des Saarlandesvorlegt vonMaria Staudteaus BerlinSaarbrücken, 2010Dekan: Prof. Dr. Erich SteinerBerichterstatter: Prof. Dr. Matthew W. CrockerProf. Dr. Gerry T. M. AltmannTag der letzten Prüfungsleistung: 12. Juli 2010AbstractGaze during situated language production and comprehension is tightly coupled withthe unfolding speech stream – speakers look at entities before mentioning them (Griffin,2001; Meyer et al., 1998), while listeners look at objects as they are mentioned (Tanen-haus et al., 1995). Thus, a speaker’s gaze to mentioned objects in a shared environmentprovides the listener with a cue to the speaker’s focus of visual attention and poten-tially to an intended referent. The coordination of interlocutor’s visual attention, inorder to learn about the partner’s goals and intentions, has been called joint attention(Moore and Dunham, 1995; Emery, 2000). By revealing the speakers communicative in-tentions, such attentional cues thus complement spoken language, facilitating ground-ing and sometimes disambiguating references (Hanna and Brennan, 2007).Previous research has shown that people readily attribute intentional states to non-humans as well, like animals, computers, or robots (Nass and Moon, 2000).