対面雑談における一時離脱からの再参加を支援する会話内容要約提示システム

抄録

In group face-to-face chats, conversation topics often change dynamically. This characteristic causes challenges for participants (leavers) in rejoining the chat after temporarily leaving due to short errands or obligations, as the topic may shift during their absence. Asking other participants (conversers) about the current topic can disrupt the conversation flow and it makes leavers hesitate to do so. To support smooth rejoining, this study proposes a conversation summarization system that presents a summary of the conversation during the leaver’s absence to the leaver. Considering the topic transitions in chats, the system provides a recent conversation summary that focuses primarily on the most recent conversation, which is assumed to be particularly important for rejoining. In a preliminary experiment comparing a general summary with the recent conversation summary, the results suggested that the recent one increased the ease of grasping the conversation content and reduced participants’ subjective perception of the time required to rejoin. Furthermore, in an experiment involving actual face-to-face conversations, the proposed method helped leavers feel they could smoothly rejoin the conversation. These findings suggest that presenting conversation summaries, especially those emphasizing recent content, prior to a leaver’s return can facilitate smoother rejoining for both the leaver and the conversers.