What consistent dominant error type was revealed when analyzing the best-performing trackers in DSTC1 and DSTC2?
Missing slots.
Analysis of the top systems competing in the initial Dialog State Tracking Challenges, specifically DSTC1 and DSTC2, uncovered a pattern regarding where errors most frequently occurred. The dominant mode of failure identified was the inability of the tracker to successfully identify or record slots that had been mentioned in the dialogue. This suggests that even when input quality from the SLU module was reasonably high, trackers often erred on the side of caution, resulting in lower recall (missing information) rather than providing incorrect values for slots they correctly identified as being active. This realization spurred subsequent research efforts to incorporate more raw ASR confidence signals or richer history features to boost recall performance.