Minimal Calming Cue
A small verbal cue from the AI that elicits a disproportionately large sense of calm in the user. Distinguished from extended de-escalation by its minimal linguistic footprint relative to its calming effect.
Operational Definition
EVENT. One occurrence would be coded when a brief AI utterance (a single short phrase or sentence) is immediately followed by a user signal of increased calm (explicit statement, or a measured drop in agitation markers such as exclamation density or all-caps). The cue-plus-calming-response pair is the unit counted.
Measurement Schema
Proposed measurement protocol (not yet empirically validated): Pre/post momentary-calm self-report (single-item 1-7) bracketing the cue, paired with a length check confirming the cue is brief (token count below a set threshold). Effect quantified as calm gain per token of cue. Complementary objective marker: change in agitation tokens before vs after. Could be reported as mean calm gain and effect-per-token.