Bridging Talk and Thought: Understanding Dialogue Dynamics Across Collaborative Problem-Solving Contexts

Researchers at the Association for Computational Linguistics presented a conceptual framework for analyzing dialogue in collaborative problem-solving contexts, with a focus on human-AI and multi-agent collaboration. The framework uses a hierarchical two-layer coding scheme integrating cognitive and non-cognitive problem solving with metacognitive regulatory mechanisms, and was validated across nine datasets. The study found that metacognitive regulation is a key discriminator of deeper collaboration.

Abstract We present a conceptual framework for analyzing dialogue in collaborative problem-solving contexts, with an emphasis on the emerging dynamics of human-AI and multi-agent collaboration. As intelligent systems become active agents capable of autonomous reasoning and strategic cooperation, understanding the dialogic interaction during collaborative problem solving is increasingly important for optimizing and evaluating such partnerships. Our framework addresses key limitations in current analytical approaches through a hierarchical two-layer coding scheme that integrates cognitive and non-cognitive problem solving with metacognitive regulatory mechanisms. We demonstrate its effectiveness and generalizability across nine datasets spanning multiple domains, and provide insights into how humans and agents coordinate their knowledge, skills, and efforts to solve complex problems, showing in particular that metacognitive regulation can be an essential discriminator of deeper collaboration.- Anthology ID: - 2026.sigdial-1.48 - Volume: Proceedings of the 27th Annual Meeting of the Special Interest Group on Discourse and Dialogue /volumes/2026.sigdial-1/ - Month: - August - Year: - 2026 - Address: - Atlanta, Georgia, USA - Editors: Jinho D. Choi /people/jinho-d-choi/ , Yun-Nung Chen /people/yun-nung-chen/ , Kotaro Funakoshi /people/kotaro-funakoshi/ , Ali Emami /people/ali-emami/ - Venue: SIGDIAL /venues/sigdial/ - SIG: SIGDIAL /sigs/sigdial/ - Publisher: - Association for Computational Linguistics - Note: - Pages: - 680–693 - Language: - URL: https://aclanthology.org/2026.sigdial-1.48/ https://aclanthology.org/2026.sigdial-1.48/ - DOI: - Cite ACL : - Zhengyuan Liu, Stella Yin, Min-Yen Kan, and Nancy Chen. 2026. Bridging Talk and Thought: Understanding Dialogue Dynamics Across Collaborative Problem-Solving Contexts https://aclanthology.org/2026.sigdial-1.48/ . In Proceedings of the 27th Annual Meeting of the Special Interest Group on Discourse and Dialogue , pages 680–693, Atlanta, Georgia, USA. Association for Computational Linguistics. - Cite Informal : Bridging Talk and Thought: Understanding Dialogue Dynamics Across Collaborative Problem-Solving Contexts https://aclanthology.org/2026.sigdial-1.48/ Liu et al., SIGDIAL 2026 - PDF: https://aclanthology.org/2026.sigdial-1.48.pdf https://aclanthology.org/2026.sigdial-1.48.pdf