Bryan Alburo’s research while affiliated with De La Salle University and other places

Child-agent collaborative storytelling can be facilitated through text and voice interfaces. Voice interfaces are more intuitive and closely resemble the way people usually relate to one another. This may be attributed to the colloquial characteristics of everyday conversations that do away with rigid linguistic structures typically present in text interfaces, such as observing the use of correct grammar and spelling. However, the capabilities of voice-based interfaces currently available in virtual assistants can lead to failure in communication due to user frustration and confusion when the agent is not providing the needed support, possibly caused by the latter's misinterpretation of the user's input. In such situations, text-based interfaces from messaging applications may be used as an alternative communication channel. In this paper, we provide a comparative analysis of the performance of our collaborative storytelling agent in processing user input by analyzing conversation logs from voice-based interface using Google Assistant, and text-based interface using Google Firebase. To do this, we give a brief overview of the different dialogue strategies employed by our agent, and how these are manifested through the interfaces. We also identify the obstacles posed by incorrect input processing to the collaborative tasks, and offer suggestions on how these challenges can be addressed.

Storytelling is both an entertaining and an educational activity for children. It allows them to express their thoughts about the world around them, while learning about language, values and interacting with others. Thus, storytelling is utilized not only at home but also in the school environment to engage children in sharing information about things that interest them and their everyday life experiences. Conversational agents or chatbots are becoming popular as a form of human-computer interaction. They can engage with their human users in dialogue using natural language to answer queries. In this paper, we describe the design of our dialogue model to enable a conversational agent to act as a collaborative storytelling peer, encouraging children to share their stories through pumps and hints.