ABCD: A Simulation Method for Accelerating Conversational Agents With Applications in Aphasia Therapy.
Journal:
Journal of speech, language, and hearing research : JSLHR
Published Date:
Jul 8, 2025
Abstract
PURPOSE: Development of aphasia therapies is limited by clinician shortages, patient recruitment challenges, and funding constraints. To address these barriers, we introduce (ABCD), a novel method for simulating goal-driven natural spoken dialogues between two conversational artificial intelligence (AI) agents-AI clinician (Re-Agent) and AI patient (AI-Aphasic), which vocally mimics aphasic errors. Using ABCD, we simulated response elaboration training between both agents with stimuli varying in semantic constraint (high via pictures, low via topics). Rather than resource-intensive fine-tuning, we leveraged prompt engineering, chain-of-thought (CoT) and zero-shot techniques for rapid, cost-effective agent development, and piloting.
