Evaluating an automated mediator for joint narratives in a conflict situation

Abstract

Joint narratives are often used in the context of reconciliation interventions for people in social conflict situations, which arise, for example, due to ethnic or religious differences. The interventions aim to encourage a change in attitudes of the participants towards each other. Typically, a human mediator is fundamentalfor achieving a successful intervention. In this work, we present an automated approach to support remote interactions between pairs of participants as they contribute to a shared story in their own language. A key component is an automated cognitive tutor that guides the participants through a controlled escalation/de-escalation process during the development of a joint narrative. We performed a controlled study comparing a trained human mediator to the automated mediator. The results demonstrate that an automated mediator, although simple at this stage, effectively supports interactions and helps to achieve positive outcomes comparable to those attained by the trained human mediator.

Museums for Older Adults and Mobility-Impaired People: Applying Inclusive Design Principles and Digital Storytelling Guidelines—A Review

“…The responses are selected from a predetermined set of potential answers. Prior studies and implementations have also been fruitful for works of a similar nature that integrate interactive storytelling and basic natural language conversation techniques [84].…”

Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence for Designing Accessible Cultural Heritage

“…These are answered from a predefined set of possible answers [44]. Other similar kind of works that incorporate simple natural language conversation techniques and interactive storytelling have also been successfully tested and implemented in the past [45][46][47].…”

Collaborative comic-based digital storytelling with primary school children

“…Despite the literature which indicates a strong interest in collaborative practices, few studies [18,19,48,56,57] have investigated the impact of collaborative digital practices in situations involving conflict.…”

“…The results demonstrate that the experience with the table-top interface appears to be motivating and, most importantly, produces at least a short-term shift of attitude toward the other. Again, Zancanaro and colleagues [57] present an automated approach to support remote interactions between pairs of participants via storytelling. In this work, the authors focus on the analysis of the automated mediator that supports interactions and helps to achieve positive outcomes.…”