Your Thoughtful Opponent: Embracing Cognitive Conflict with Peer Agent

Abstract: As complex societal issues continue to emerge, fostering democratic skills like valuing diverse perspectives and collaborative decision-making is increasingly vital in education. In this paper, we propose a Peer Agent (PA) system designed to simulate a deliberative conversational partner that induces socio-cognitive conflict within dilemma-based game play. Drawing on by the Inner Thoughts framework and grounded in value-sensitive discourse analysis, the PA actively participates in voice-based multi-party deliberation with human players. The system architecture consists of five core modules: Context Interpreter, Agent State Manager, Thought Generator, Thought Evaluator, and Thought Articulator.