Masato Ishizaki

A Method of Extracting Topic Threads Towards Facilitating Knowledge Creation in Chat Conversations

This paper proposes a robust algorithm for extracting topic threads in chat conversations using some language devices and discusses how chat conversations can contribute to knowledge creation using the history of chat conversations and our proposed algorithm. There are two promised applications: 1) an automatically generated knowledge-base and 2) a supporting system for chat conversations by editing the history of chat conversations.

The impact of gender on medical visit communication and patient satisfaction within the Japanese primary care context

OBJECTIVE This study was designed to address significant gaps in the predominantly western-centric research literature by examining the influence of gender concordance in medical communication and patient satisfaction within the Japanese context. METHODS New primary care patients (54 male and 49 female) were randomly assigned to study internists (6 males and 5 females). Recorded visits were coded with the Roter Interaction Analysis System (RIAS). Post-visit, patients completed a Japanese version of the Medical Interview Satisfaction Scale (MISS). 　 RESULTS: Female concordant visits showed higher levels of patient-centeredness than all other gender combinations. Female physicians substantially modified their communication based on patient gender while male physicians did not. Gender concordance was associated with higher female, but lower male patient satisfaction relative to gender discordant visits. CONCLUSION Contrary to normative experience of medicine as a male dominated profession in Japan, and gender-based power differentials, male-gendered clinical communication is less likely to satisfy male than female patients, while female-gendered communication is positively associated with female patient satisfaction. PRACTICE IMPLICATIONS Patient satisfaction ratings reflect greater gender flexibility in terms of acceptable physician behavior than Japanese norms would suggest.

Implicit Proposal Filtering in Multi-Party Consensus-Building Conversations

An attempt was made to statistically estimate proposals which survived the discussion to be incorporated in the final agreement in an instance of a Japanese design conversation. Low level speech and vision features of hearer behaviors corresponding to aiduti, noddings and gaze were found to be a positive predictor of survival. The result suggests that non-linguistic hearer responses work as implicit proposal filters in consensus building, and could provide promising candidate features for the purpose of recognition and summarization of meeting events.

Unsupervised clustering in multimodal multiparty meeting analysis

Nonverbal signals such as gazes, head nods, facial expressions, and bodily gestures play significant roles in organizing human interactions. Their significance is even more emphasized in multiparty settings, since many interaction organization behaviors, for example, turn-taking and participation role assignment, are realized nonverbally. Several projects have been involved in collecting multimodal corpora [3,4] for multiparty dialogues, to develop techniques for meeting event recognitions from nonverbal as well as verbal signals (e.g., [11,2]).