Reproduce “Hear You in Silence: Designing for Active Listening in Human Interaction with Conversational Agents Using Context-Aware Pacing” on OpenResearch
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About this paper
Zhihan Jiang, Qianhui Chen, Chu Zhang, Yanheng Li, Ray LC
Researchers designed a framework for conversational agents that uses context-aware pacing, including strategic silences, to mimic human active listening. This approach enhanced perceived listening quality, affective trust, and human-likeness, leading to deeper user self-disclosure and increased conversational engagement.
Key insights
- Conversational pacing, particularly strategic silence, is as critical as verbal content for fostering empathic human-AI relationships, challenging the prevailing 'efficiency-first' paradigm in CA design.
- Users interpret context-aware silences as signs of 'serious thinking,' 'deliberation,' and 'social presence,' thereby enhancing perceived human-likeness and building affective trust.
- While context-aware pacing generally improves interaction quality and encourages deeper self-disclosure, a minority of users experienced frustration due to violated expectations for AI efficiency, perceiving deliberate pauses as slowness.
Summary by alphaXiv.
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