Cristen Torrey

Research

Project on People and Robots: Help Giving
Robots are frequently conceptualized as helping machines. But even when receiving help benefits performance, it can have negative social and emotional consequences. Helping interactions must be managed carefully to avoid threatening the help recipients' sense of control and competence. This project explores and tests communication strategies for mitigating the social costs of receiving help from a robot.

Informal Knowledge Sharing Online
The How-To has recently emerged as a genre of online content that describes how something is done. This study used semi-structured interviews to explore how computer and electronics hobbyists share procedural knowledge online. This work began during an internship at Intel Corporation in Santa Clara.

Organizing Disaster Relief Online
Following Hurricane Katrina, people made use of several internet-based communication technologies (websites, blogs, forums, bulletin boards, etc.) to coordinate relief efforts, independently of existing relief organizations. This project used survey data, interviews, and textual analysis of online communications to observe the different systems for group coordination that emerged in the months following the disaster.

Publications

Torrey, C. The Social Dimensions of Receiving Unsolicited Help from a Robot. Extended Abstracts of CHI 2008, Doctoral Consortium (in press).

Torrey, C., Fussell, S., and Kiesler, S. What Robots Could Teach Us About Perspective Taking. in Morsella, E. (ed.) Expressing Oneself/Expressing One's self: A festschrift in honor of Robert M. Krauss. Taylor and Francis, NY (in press).

Kiesler, S., Powers, A., Fussell, S., and Torrey, C. Anthropomorphic Interactions with a Software Agent and a Robot. Social Cognition (in press).

Torrey, C., McDonald, D.W., Schilit, W., and Bly, S. How-To Pages: Informal Systems of Expertise Sharing. Proc. European Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work 2007, Springer-Verlag (2007).

Torrey, C., Powers, A., Fussell, S. and Kiesler, S. Exploring Adaptive Dialogue Based on a Robot's Awareness of Human Gaze and Task Progress. Proc. Human-Robot Interaction 2007, ACM Press (2007).

Powers, A., Kiesler, S., Fussell, S. and Torrey, C. Comparing a Computer Agent with a Humanoid Robot. Proc. Human-Robot Interaction 2007, ACM Press (2007).

Gold, K., Fasel, I., Freier, N. and Torrey, C. Young Researchers' Views on the Current and Future State of HRI. Proc. Human-Robot Interaction 2007, ACM Press (2007).

Torrey, C., Burke, M., Dey, A., Fussell, S. and Kiesler, S. Approaches to Authority in Online Disaster Relief Communities after Hurricane Katrina. in S. Weisband (ed.) Leadership at a Distance: Research in Technologically Supported Work. Lawrence Erlbaum: Mahwah, NJ (2007).

Torrey, C., Lee, M., Burke, M., Dey, A., Fussell, S. and Kiesler, S. Connected Giving: Ordinary People Coordinating Disaster Relief on the Internet. Proc. of the Fortieth Annual Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences, Computer Society Press (2007).

Torrey, C., Powers, A., Marge, M., Fussell, S. and Kiesler, S. Effects of Adaptive Robot Dialogue on Information Exchange and Social Relations. Proc. Human-Robot Interaction 2006, ACM Press (2006).

Torrey, C., Fussell, S. and Kiesler, S. Appropriate Accommodations: Speech Technologies and the Needs of Older Adults. Proc. AAAI Fall Symposium, Caring Machines, AAAI Press (2005).

Rose, C. P. and Torrey, C. Interactivity versus Expectation: Eliciting Learning Oriented Behavior with Tutorial Dialogue Systems. Proc. Interact 2005, Springer Press (2005).

Rose, C. P., Torrey, C., Aleven, V., Robinson, A., Wu, C. and Forbus, K. CycleTalk: Towards a Dialogue Agent that Guides Design with an Articulate Simulator. Proc. Intelligent Tutoring Systems 2004, Springer Press (2004).

Rose, C. P. and Torrey, C. DReSDeN: Towards a Trainable Tutorial Dialogue Manager to Support Negotiation Dialogues for Learning and Reflection. Proc. Intelligent Tutoring Systems 2004, Springer Press (2004).

Aleven, V., Ogan, A., Popescu, O., Torrey, C., and Koedinger, K. Evaluating the Effectiveness of a Tutorial Dialogue System. Proc. Intelligent Tutoring Systems 2004, Springer Press (2004).


PhD Student
Advisors: Sara Kiesler
Susan Fussell
Human-Computer Interaction Institute
School of Computer Science
Carnegie Mellon University

ctorrey [AT] cs [DOT] cmu [DOT] edu