Understanding is a Two-Way Street: User-Initiated Repair on Agent Responses and Hearing in Conversational Interfaces

Although methods for repairing prior turns in natural conversation are critical for enabling mutual understanding, or successful communication, these methods are seldom built into conversational user interfaces systematically. Chatbots and voice assistants tend to ask users to paraphrase what they said if it was not understood, but users cannot do the same if they encounter trouble in understanding what the agent said. Understanding is a one-way street in most (intent-based) conversation-like interfaces. An exception to this is Moore and Arar (2019), who demonstrate nine types of user-initiated repair on agent responses that are common in natural conversation and who have shown that users will employ these repair features correctly in text-based interfaces if taught. In this small-scale study, we test these user-initiated repairs (in second position) in a voice-based interface. With understanding-oriented repairs, we found that participants employed them much the same way in text and voice. In addition, we examine some hearing- and speaking-oriented repairs that emerged from the use of our novel multi-modal interface. We found that participants used them to manage troubles specific to the voice modality. Analysis of user logs and transcripts suggests that user-initiated repair features are valuable components of conversational interfaces.