Multiparty Proactive Communication A Perspective for Evolving Shared Mental Models.pdf

Multiparty Proactive Communication: A Perspective for Evolving Shared Mental Models ? Kaivan Kamali and Xiaocong Fan and John Yen College of Information Sciences Technology The Pennsylvania State University {kxk302,xxf2,juy1}@ Abstract Helping behavior in effective teams is enabled by some overlapping “shared mental models” that are developed and maintained by members of the team. In this pa- per, we take the perspective that multiparty “proactive” communication is critical for establishing and main- taining such a shared mental model among teammates, which is the basis for agents to offer proactive help and to achieve coherent teamwork. We first provide for- mal semantics for multiparty proactive performatives within a team setting. We then examine how such per- formatives result in updates to mental model of team- mates, and how such updates can trigger helpful behav- iors from other teammates. Introduction Shared mental model (SMM) is a hypothetical construct that has been put forward to explain certain coordinated behav- iors of human teams (J. A. Cannon-Bowers Converse 1993; Sycara Lewis 1991). Basically, a shared mental model represents each team member’s model of the global team state. This representation produces a mutual aware- ness, with which team members can reason not only about their own situation, but also about the status and activities of teammates and progress of the team toward its goal. A computational shared mental model enables a team of software agents to engage in effective teamwork behaviors. The scope of such a shared mental model is rather broad and includes common knowledge (beliefs) (Rao Georgeff 1995), joint goals/intentions (Cohen Levesque 1991), shared team structure (Yen et al. 2001), shared plans (Grosz Kraus 1999), etc. Multiparty communication (or multiparty dialogues) are conversations that involve more than two parties (Dignum Vreeswijk 2004; Traum 2004; Kumar et al. 2000; Huget Demazeau 2005), and play a major role in e