Laughter in Human–Agent Interaction: Capturing the Temporal Relationship Between the Laughable and Laughter

Abstract:

Laughter is an important interactional resource that contributes to the sequential organization of conversation, the management of social relationships, and the negotiation of meaning. Although often associated with humour, laughter serves diverse communicative functions that depend on interactional context and the laughable. As conversational agents become increasingly integrated into everyday life, studying laughter in human–agent interaction (HAI) requires annotation schemes that account for both the laughable and interactional timing. Our analysis is based on the Barthel corpus, comprising recordings of six German households interacting with Alexa.

Research areas:

• Dialogue
• Laughter
• DivCon

Year:

2026

Type of Publication:

In Proceedings

Book title:

Proceedings of the 30th Workshop on the Semantics and Pragmatics of Dialogue - Poster Abstracts