Dialogue: Empirical Observations

Theory-neutral observations about multi-turn conversation dynamics. These are patterns that any model of conversation must account for, independent of whether the model is Bayesian (RSA), game-theoretic, or information-structural.

Key Phenomena

1. Common ground development: shared beliefs become more specific
2. Belief convergence: participants learn from each other
3. Cooperative contributions: speakers are informative and non-redundant
4. Contradiction resistance: CG resists contradictory updates

structure Phenomena.Dialogue.ConversationDatum : Type

An empirical observation about conversational dynamics.

• description : String
• uncertaintyDecreases : Bool

  Does shared uncertainty decrease over the conversation?

• beliefsConverge : Bool

  Do participants' beliefs become more similar?

• contributionsInformative : Bool

  Are contributions non-redundant (new information)?

def Phenomena.Dialogue.instReprConversationDatum.repr : ConversationDatum → Nat → Std.Format

Equations

• One or more equations did not get rendered due to their size.

instance Phenomena.Dialogue.instReprConversationDatum : Repr ConversationDatum

Equations

• Phenomena.Dialogue.instReprConversationDatum = { reprPrec := Phenomena.Dialogue.instReprConversationDatum.repr }

def Phenomena.Dialogue.successfulInfoSharing : ConversationDatum

Successful information-sharing: both participants contribute, beliefs converge.

Equations

• One or more equations did not get rendered due to their size.

def Phenomena.Dialogue.asymmetricInfoSharing : ConversationDatum

Asymmetric conversation: one participant is informed, the other uncertain.

Equations

• One or more equations did not get rendered due to their size.

def Phenomena.Dialogue.contradictoryBeliefs : ConversationDatum

Contradictory beliefs: both hold strong conflicting priors.

Equations

• One or more equations did not get rendered due to their size.

def Phenomena.Dialogue.noncommittalSpeaker : ConversationDatum

Noncommittal speaker: one participant has no strong beliefs to share.

Equations

• One or more equations did not get rendered due to their size.