DiET: Dialogue Experimentation Tools

People first encounter, learn and use languages through dialogue with others. Although significant progress has been made in understanding the cognitive systems underpinning language processing, research on dialogue has been limited by the practical problems involved in studying such an inherently interactive and context sensitive process. The goal of DiET is to provide powerful new tools for studying dialogue. It will do this by building on the opportunities created by the popularity of text-based communication, such as SMS, instant messaging and chat rooms, and the development of software that can perform linguistic processing of text in real-time. In DiET this combination will be exploited to create a chat tool that can, for example, translate or substitute words and phrases, insert `spoof' questions that appear to come from another participant (unbeknownst to them) or create controlled `misunderstandings' between participants. This can be achieved without disruption to the exchange and in a way that is sensitive to unfolding conversation. The level of precision and experimental control this will provide is unprecedented in dialogue research. It will allow us to analyse the mechanisms that underpin shared understanding at a much greater level of detail than has been possible before. We aim to use this potential to drive a step-change in dialogue research. The software produced in DiET will be distributed free to the research community under an open source license. It will be used within the project to support experiments that demonstrate its potential to address the outstanding challenges for current dialogue research. It will also be distributed to co-operating field sites in the UK and internationally for testing and integration into other research programmes.