Control and Initiative in Collaborative Problem Solving Dialogues

Evidence is provided from a corpus of collaborative problem solving dialogues that control should apply to the dialogue level and initiative to the problem solving level and what role these two phenomena have in mixed initiative dialogues are asked.

Abstract

In this paper we first question whether control and ini-tiative are as synchronous as current usages appear to make them. We provide some evidence from a corpus of collaborative problem solving dialogues that control should apply to the dialogue level and initiative to the problem solving level. We then ask what role these two phenomena have in mixed initiative dialogues and present an example of how the recognition of lack of initiative at the problem solving level is cued by con-trol at the dialogue level.