  We present some results concerning the dialogue behavior and inferred
sentiment of a group of older adults interacting with a computer-based avatar.
Our avatar is unique in its ability to hold natural dialogues on a wide range
of everyday topics---27 topics in three groups, developed with the help of
gerontologists. The three groups vary in ``degrees of intimacy", and as such in
degrees of difficulty for the user. Each participant interacted with the avatar
for 7-9 sessions over a period of 3-4 weeks; analysis of the dialogues reveals
correlations such as greater verbosity for more difficult topics, increasing
verbosity with successive sessions, especially for more difficult topics,
stronger sentiment on topics concerned with life goals rather than routine
activities, and stronger self-disclosure for more intimate topics. In addition
to their intrinsic interest, these results also reflect positively on the
sophistication of our dialogue system.
