SLOT (Spatial Logistics Planning Task) is an experimental platform designed for studying multimodal communication between human participants [1]. It has been developed to gather data about human-human interaction in the European COMIC (COnversational Multimodal Interaction with Computers) project. At the core of the SLOT paradigm is a computer program that displays a map with several cities, connected to one another by one or more roads. A number of cities are marked as ‘targets’. The subjects' task is to negotiate a route through the map, such that all targets are reached at least once, while minimizing the ‘costs’ associated with the route.

Both subjects have a graphical LCD-tablet in front of them, on which the maps are displayed. They can use a 'pen' and 'eraser' to draw on their tablets, using the tablet as a 'whiteboard' to aid the negotiating process. Subjects' verbal and non-verbal behavior is recorded on video, while the content of the writing pads and the subjects' pen movements are recorded on disk. This paradigm has several advantages for the study of multimodal communication. The main advantages are its high flexibility, in terms of the number of independent variables that can be manipulated, and the presence of an objective measure of the quality of the negotiated solution. Also, due to the spatial nature of the task, the paradigm is highly suitable for eliciting multimodal communicative behavior (e.g. speech, 2-D/3-D gesture, facial expression and gaze behavior).

References

1. Levelt, W.J.M. (2001) SLOT: A spatial logistics planning task for COMIC. Internal COMIC document.

Paper presented at Measuring Behavior 2002 , 4^th International Conference on Methods and Techniques in Behavioral Research, 27-30 August 2002, Amsterdam, The Netherlands

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