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International Workshop on Cross-cultural and Culture-specific Aspects of Conversational Backchannels and Feedback

December 5-7, 2006
Marina del Rey, California

 

Overview

This will be a limited attendance "working" workshop, with relatively few "orienting" talks, and more time devoted to group discussions and sub-group working sessions on analysis of specific multi-party interactions and application of analytical tools. We will study verbal and non-verbal feedback expressions from several cultures, including, US, UK, Iraq, Mexico, Japan, Bulgaria, Napoli, Sweden, and see how they are realized in different contexts in mainly multi-party situations.

 

Possible Disscussion Topics

  1. How do people from different cultures provide and react to backchannels and similar feedback in conversation, and how can these differences be used to inform culturally-specific virtual humans and avatars?

 

  1. How does culture affect feedback functions and types of expression?

 

  1. How does feedback function in two, three and multi-party situations in different cultures?

 

  1. Can we formulate a cross-linguistic/cross-cultural 'dictionary' of verbal and non-verbal feedback expressions?

 

  1. Can we formulate reliable rules for the application of feedback functions and expressions in different cultural contexts?

 

  1. How does the activity affect the feedback functions and expressions?

 

  1. How is feedback affected by the modality of communication?
    - Face to face to face
    - radio
    - chat
    - mixed modalities
    - synchronous vs asynchronous (semi-synchronous)

 

  1. How does the activity affect the feedback functions and forms ?
    - Chat vs Meetings vs task performance
    - fixed participant roles vs loose (interchangable) vs no defined roles

 

9.  What tools are available for feedback data collection and analysis?
- annotated corpora
- capture systems
- annotation schemes
- annotation tools

 

10.                What applications are there for theories of cross-cultural feedback?
- design of groupware
- distance communication
- training systems
- meeting aids