If every child converses differently...,
Yes every child's communication is important

Then why isn’t every conversation effective ?

How Ko-VaaD Works: AI-Powered Conversation Training

The science of Social conversation

Structural Rules in Communication

Structural rules in communication are the guidelines that determine the organization and flow of conversations. They provide a framework for skills such as how much to speak, when to speak, how to listen and the sequence of information, ensuring conversations are enjoyable and not one-sided. These structural skills are needed both via non verbal communication (body language and gestures) as well as verbal and are further needed to both receive as well as impart information. Listening and speaking need to flow into each other and form a pattern of their own. To support your child in building this rhythm, we focus on four foundational skills: 1. How to join a conversation 2. Orienting to the Speaker 3. Turn taking to the Speaker 4. Quantity of Speaking

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Contextual adaptation

What and how we talk greatly depends on ‘Who’ or the person we are talking to and ‘Where” or the place we are at during the conversation. These two parameters together guide the topic or what we talk about along with the details we share during the conversation. When we are speaking to someone very close like a parent in the privacy of our house, we may talk about personal topics such as opinions about another family member, unfavourable experiences etc. in doing so , we would recount details in great length. In contrast while speaking to a neighbour outside the house, we may talk about a ‘general’ day at school / work in fewer details. Further, these two parameters also dictate the tone of voice and volume we converse in in adjunct to the choice of words (formal /informal), language and sentence structure. We focus on two important aspects of this skill: 1. Language (what is okay to share and when), and 2. Tone (how we express it depending on the situation).

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Content – What to Say

All engaging, enjoyable conversations need effective way to initiate a new conversation or join in an existing one as well as an understanding of when and how to end the conversation. And every start and end needs an equally effective middle !! Yes, its an art! The heart of the conversation is the topic, but more importantly is also, reciprocal in nature. This means it not only involves sharing own details but also showing curiosity about the conversation and the partner. It involves listening with understanding and feeling the emotional flavour of it. How does this happen? This is where the art becomes a science. To achieve the above flavours of a conversation, conversationalists need to share own details which include a range of facts and experience, they need to ask reciprocal questions, answer other’s questions. On hearing the partner, share some information, they need to make a comment on it displaying the ‘feel and understanding’ part. Thus to help structure our conversations based on context, we can keep in mind six important building blocks of communication: 1. Topic, 2. Reciprocal Questions, 3. Facts, 4. Experiences, 5.Comments, 6. Opinions

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Structural Rules

Despite having many skills that form the content or chunk of talking, the overall conversation can still seem irrelevant or lack understanding. This is due to lack of structural rule – those guiding skills that cement any conversation. These primarily concern with listening to the conversational partner and formulating own content based on the partner’s information along with ‘when’ and ‘how much’ to speak. This goes beyond talking grossly on a common topic. It involves paying attention to and remembering the specific details shared by the other person, using this information to form an understanding of the other’s experiences and adding own information that relates with the details shared thus far in the conversation. At Kovaad, the AI facilitates turn taking in conversation by restricting the amount the trainee can speak in his turn. Thereafter it sends a compulsory response to every statement made by the trainee. This automatically generates a turn taking pattern. Further, for trainees who might not take up their turn in talking, Kovaad AI ‘nudges’ the trainee to respond. It further nurtures listening by weaving in ‘back questioning’ and reminding about the specific details given by AI with regard to the overall topic. By doing this, Kovaad AI spotlights the topical detail the trainee should be remembering and picking up to further the overall conversation. Both the above are done through specific training modules and are often coupled with training modules for asking questions and answering questions. When used together these above skills pave the way for ‘free flowing’ and engaging conversations.

Contextual Adaptation

Understanding Social Circles

Social Circles: Building Confidence in Social Interactions

Help your child navigate real-life social situations with interactive role-play and scenarios

Inner Circle

Closest relationships – usually close family members, very close friends or ‘family friends’.

The inner circle consists of immediate family members such as siblings, grandparents, uncles and aunts, cousins and more. These are people the trainee feel close to, are usually involved and aware of the trainee’s everyday / personal matters and interacts with the trainee on regular and frequent basis.

The
Child

Didi

Papa

Mumma

Dadaji

One of the first understandings needed to make appropriate changes to our conversation content is “closeness of relationships”. Once we understand how close a person is to us, or what our ‘social relationship’ is to that person, we are able to make appropriate choices of ‘what to talk about’ and ‘how much details to share’ with different people. These social relationships might be close relative, distant relative, neighbors, colleagues, peers, teachers, boss at work and community helpers like guards, cab drivers or shopkeepers. This is visualized as “social circles”. These are a set of concentric circles with the trainee and his closest people at the center. Circles nearer the center represent closer relationships with whom more personal topics maybe talked about with deeper details while farther circles represent relationships with whom general topics with facts and opinions can be shared. Kovaad works towards this by helping the trainee and the guardian think through the relationship with various people and divide them into 3 “categories” – circle 1 (innermost) to circle 3 (most distant). The guidelines for this categorization is based on frequency of meeting them and amount of time spent with them. As the guardian is creating the profile for the trainee, Kovaad requires them to create a contact list for the trainee to talk to. For each contact added, the guardian chooses the circle they belong to vis-à-vis the trainee. Further, Kovaad assigns specific colour to each category, the same colour code being reflected on the trainee’s chat screen to help understand him understand the social circle category. Kovaad’s USP is in its ability to vary the chat responses given to the trainee by the AI based on the social circle defined.

Content- What to Say

The content of conversations comes largely from ‘ideation’. Ideation includes being able to think about various facets of what the topic is. This begins with being able to imagine the who (people) likely was/could be there, features of the space, i.e. where; when – imagining not just the time or date but the knowledge of its impact (if any) on the topic, details of the main event or topic itself, with descriptions that add to the listener’s comprehension. This is followed with understanding of how (sequence) and why (reason with causal links). The use of these ideas are not only in speaking our own piece, but also asking about these thoughts to the conversation partner.keeping this is mind, at Kovaad, we first develop a skill profile of the trainee through “Know your child” parent quiz substantiated by an evaluation of the trainee’s initial chats. From the profile, relevant sub-skills are picked up and training module assigned. When the trainee logs into Kovaad and begins chatting, the AI’s responses in the chat are in accordance with the assigned module and facilitate the specific skill development. Once the trainee displays greater skills, another module is assigned for the chats. Parallely, the trainee engages in ‘leisure chat”. This chat is not aligned with any training module specifically. Engaging in this helps the trainee apply the gained skill in ‘out of training’ contexts, thus consolidating the learning.