Project A05: Contextualized and online parametrization of attention in human–robot explanatory dialog
The project A05 explores how the use of verbal negation and contrasts (e.g."not down, but up!") can be a successful means in explanation dialogs; This research is based on previous studies and findings that demonstrate how such verbal strategies can better connect new information with established knowledge and directly address potential misunderstandings. Building on this foundation, the project members aim to develop scaffolding strategies for a social XAI (sXAI) system —specifically an embodied agent or robot—that is able to explain a human to assemble materials in such a way that the human will be empowered to learn the actions and to perform them on their own.
During this funding period, researchers from linguistics and computer science will focus on developing and testing these scaffolding strategies, along with their gradual removal. They aim to create an embodied robot that will:
- Track Interaction History: The robot will monitor the user's task performance to gauge their understanding of actions.
- Apply Scaffolding Strategies: It will use verbal contrasts, which have been developed and empirically tested, to assist the user effectively.
- Gradually Remove Support (Fading): The robot will phase out scaffolding as the user becomes more proficient in the task.
By equipping robots with these novel capabilities, the project team aims to improve the way robots assist humans in understanding and performing tasks.
Research areas: Linguistics, Computer science
Associate Member
Dr.-Ing. Birte Richter, Bielefeld University
Support Staff
Bjarne Thomzik, Bielefeld University
Former Members
Prof. Dr. Ingrid Scharlau, Project leader
Dr. André Groß, Research associate
Ngoc Chi Banh, Research associate
Posters
Conference-Poster presented at 4th Summer School on Social Human-Robot Interaction with the title "Interactive Contrast: Does conversational contrast affects action understanding?" by Amit Singh and Katharina J. Rohlfing.
Conference-Poster presented at 9th Experimental Pragmatics Conference with the title "Negation processing in action: How action path is interpreted in a negated context?" by Amit Singh and Katharina J. Rohlfing.
Publications
Incremental communication
B. Wrede, H. Buschmeier, K.J. Rohlfing, M. Booshehri, A. Grimminger, in: K.J. Rohlfing, K. Främling, S. Alpsancar, K. Thommes, B.Y. Lim (Eds.), Social Explainable AI, Springer, n.d.
Practices: How to establish an explaining practice
K.J. Rohlfing, A.-L. Vollmer, A. Grimminger, in: K. Rohlfing, K. Främling, K. Thommes, S. Alpsancar, B.Y. Lim (Eds.), Social Explainable AI, Springer, n.d.
Contrastive Verbal Guidance: A Beneficial Context for Attention To Events and Their Memory?
A. Singh, K.J. Rohlfing, Cognitive Science 49 (2025).
Intra-individual variability in TVA attentional capacity and weight distribution: A reanalysis across days and an experiment within-day
N.C. Banh, I. Scharlau, (2025).
Manners Matter: Action history guides attention and repair choices during interaction
A. Singh, K.J. Rohlfing, in: IEEE International Conference on Development and Learning (ICDL), Prague, 2025.
Embedding Psycholinguistics: An Interactive Framework for Studying Language in Action
A. Singh, K.J. Rohlfing, in: 6th Biannual Conference of the German Society for Cognitive Science, Bochum, Germany, Bochum, 2025.
Forms of Understanding for XAI-Explanations
H. Buschmeier, H.M. Buhl, F. Kern, A. Grimminger, H. Beierling, J.B. Fisher, A. Groß, I. Horwath, N. Klowait, S.T. Lazarov, M. Lenke, V. Lohmer, K. Rohlfing, I. Scharlau, A. Singh, L. Terfloth, A.-L. Vollmer, Y. Wang, A. Wilmes, B. Wrede, Cognitive Systems Research 94 (2025).
Coupling of Task and Partner Model: Investigating the Intra-Individual Variability in Gaze during Human–Robot Explanatory Dialogue
A. Singh, K.J. Rohlfing, in: Proceedings of 26th ACM International Conference on Multimodal Interaction (ICMI 2024), 2024.
Benefiting from Binary Negations? Verbal Negations Decrease Visual Attention and Balance Its Distribution
N.C. Banh, J. Tünnermann, K.J. Rohlfing, I. Scharlau, Frontiers in Psychology 15 (2024).
RISE: an open-source architecture for interdisciplinary and reproducible human–robot interaction research
A. Groß, C. Schütze, M. Brandt, B. Wrede, B. Richter, Frontiers in Robotics and AI 10 (2023).
EEG Correlates of Distractions and Hesitations in Human–Robot Interaction: A LabLinking Pilot Study
B. Richter, F. Putze, G. Ivucic, M. Brandt, C. Schütze, R. Reisenhofer, B. Wrede, T. Schultz, Multimodal Technologies and Interaction 7 (2023).
First steps towards real-time assessment of attentional weights and capacity according to TVA
N.C. Banh, I. Scharlau, in: S. Merz, C. Frings, B. Leuchtenberg, B. Moeller, S. Mueller, R. Neumann, B. Pastötter, L. Pingen, G. Schui (Eds.), Abstracts of the 65th TeaP, ZPID (Leibniz Institute for Psychology), 2023.
Scaffolding the human partner by contrastive guidance in an explanatory human-robot dialogue
A. Groß, A. Singh, N.C. Banh, B. Richter, I. Scharlau, K.J. Rohlfing, B. Wrede, Frontiers in Robotics and AI 10 (2023).
Contrastiveness in the context of action demonstration: an eye-tracking study on its effects on action perception and action recall
A. Singh, K.J. Rohlfing, in: Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society 45 (45), Cognitive Science Society, Sydney, Australia, 2023.
What is Missing in XAI So Far?
U. Schmid, B. Wrede, KI - Künstliche Intelligenz 36 (2022) 303–315.
Which “motionese” parameters change with children's age? Disentangling attention-getting from action-structuring modifications
K. Rohlfing, A.-L. Vollmer, J. Fritsch, B. Wrede, Frontiers in Communication 7 (2022).
An Architecture Supporting Configurable Autonomous Multimodal Joint-Attention-Therapy for Various Robotic Systems
A. Groß, C. Schütze, B. Wrede, B. Richter, in: INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON MULTIMODAL INTERACTION, ACM, 2022, pp. 154–159.
Enabling Non-Technical Domain Experts to Create Robot-Assisted Therapeutic Scenarios via Visual Programming
C. Schütze, A. Groß, B. Wrede, B. Richter, in: INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON MULTIMODAL INTERACTION, ACM, 2022, pp. 166–170.
Effects of verbal negation on TVA’s capacity and weight parameters
N.C. Banh, I. Scharlau, in: S. Malejka, M. Barth, H. Haider, C. Stahl (Eds.), TeaP 2022 - Abstracts of the 64th Conference of Experimental Psychologists , Pabst Science Publishers, 2022.
Folgen wiederholter Negation auf die Aufmerksamkeit
N.C. Banh, I. Scharlau, K.J. Rohlfing, in: C. Bermeitinger, W. Greve (Eds.), 52. Kongress Der Deutschen Gesellschaft Für Psychologie, 2022.
Exploring monological and dialogical phases in naturally occurring explanations
J.B. Fisher, V. Lohmer, F. Kern, W. Barthlen, S. Gaus, K. Rohlfing, KI - Künstliche Intelligenz 36 (2022) 317–326.
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