A Storytelling Robot managing Persuasive and Ethical Stances via ACT-R: an Exploratory Study

TL;DR

This paper introduces a storytelling robot controlled by ACT-R that can adopt persuasive and ethical stances during COVID-19 discussions, integrating cognitive models with dialogue management and evaluating its effectiveness.

Contribution

It proposes the first needs-driven model combining cognitive assumptions, storytelling, persuasive techniques, and ethical attitudes in a dialogue agent.

Findings

System tested on 63 participants with promising results.

Demonstrates integration of persuasive techniques with ethical considerations.

Provides insights into dialogue management using cognitive architectures.

Abstract

We present a storytelling robot, controlled via the ACT-R cognitive architecture, able to adopt different persuasive techniques and ethical stances while conversing about some topics concerning COVID-19. The main contribution of the paper consists in the proposal of a needs-driven model that guides and evaluates, during the dialogue, the use (if any) of persuasive techniques available in the agent procedural memory. The portfolio of persuasive techniques tested in such a model ranges from the use of storytelling, to framing techniques and rhetorical-based arguments. To the best of our knowledge, this represents the first attempt of building a persuasive agent able to integrate a mix of explicitly grounded cognitive assumptions about dialogue management, storytelling and persuasive techniques as well as ethical attitudes. The paper presents the results of an exploratory evaluation of the system on 63 participants