Your Thoughtful Opponent: Embracing Cognitive Conflict with Peer Agent

TL;DR

This paper introduces a Peer Agent system that fosters democratic skills by inducing socio-cognitive conflict in dilemma-based games through voice-based deliberation, enhancing educational engagement.

Contribution

It presents a novel Peer Agent architecture grounded in value-sensitive discourse analysis to promote deliberative dialogue and cognitive conflict in educational settings.

Findings

Demonstrates effective socio-cognitive conflict induction

Enhances collaborative decision-making skills

Supports multi-party voice-based deliberation

Abstract

As complex societal issues continue to emerge, fostering democratic skills like valuing diverse perspectives and collaborative decision-making is increasingly vital in education. In this paper, we propose a Peer Agent (PA) system designed to simulate a deliberative conversational partner that induces socio-cognitive conflict within dilemma-based game play. Drawing on by the Inner Thoughts framework and grounded in value-sensitive discourse analysis, the PA actively participates in voice-based multi-party deliberation with human players. The system architecture consists of five core modules: Context Interpreter, Agent State Manager, Thought Generator, Thought Evaluator, and Thought Articulator.