Question utterances in a collaborative conveyer task in virtual space

A group of participants performed a collaborative conveyer task that needs to transfer objects to designated positions by vehicles in a virtual space. All utterances were transcribed and questioning utterances were specified based on rising intonation patterns and content of the speech. Then we classified these utterances into four types: planning (ask whole transporting strategy in task), partner´s (asking the movement and status of the partners), self (asking own movement and status), and other, and analyzed the changes of the frequency of these question types during 10 trials. We also constructed a collaboration levels and evaluated collaboration status for each completion of a box conveying. This collaboration level was determined by the number of people who collaborated to move one box during one trial. We investigated the relationship between strategy changes, collaboration levels, and question utterances. The results were that in a group that showed a strategy change, collaboration level was generally higher and more varied than the collaboration level observed in the group that showed no strategy change. In addition, in a group that showed a strategy change, question utterances about whole plan decreased but question utterances about the self status increased. However, in a group who showed no strategy change, all types of question utterances decreased. It was found that when a strategy change occurred, people tend to make more questions about self status to confirm the details of movement to complete the task. Collaboration level changes can be a good index to infer occurrences of strategy changes.