Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society

Despite the goal to permit freedom of expression, natural language interfaces remain imable to recognize the full range of language that occurs in spontaneously generated user input Simply increasing the linguistic coverage of a large, static interface is a poor solution; as coverage increases, response time decreases, regardless of whether the extensions benefit any particular user. Instead, we propose that an adaptive interface be dedicated to each user. By automatically acquiring the idiosyncratic language of each individual, an adaptive interface permits greater freedom of expression while slowing system response only insofar as there is ambiguity in the individual's language. The usefulness of adaptation relies on the presence of three regularities in users' linguistic behaviors: within-user consistency, across-user variability, and limited user adaptability. W e show that these behaviors are characteristic of users under conditions of frequent use.