Abstract
Backchannels (BCs) are short vocal and visual listener responses that signal attention, interest, and understanding to the speaker. Previous studies have investigated BC prediction in telephone-style dialogs from prosodic cues. In contrast, we consider spontaneous face-to-face dialogs. The additional visual modality allows speaker and listener to monitor each other's attention continuously, and we hypothesize that this affects the BC-inviting cues. In this study, we investigate how gaze, in addition to prosody, can cue BCs. Moreover, we focus on the type of BC performed, with the aim to find out whether vocal and visual BCs are invited by similar cues. In contrast to telephone-style dialogs, we do not find rising/falling pitch to be a BC-inviting cue. However, in a face-to-face setting, gaze appears to cue BCs. In addition, we find that mutual gaze occurs significantly more often during visual BCs. Moreover, vocal BCs are more likely to be timed during pauses in the speaker's speech.
Original language | English |
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Title of host publication | Proceedings of Interspeech 2011 |
Place of Publication | France |
Publisher | International Speech Communication Association |
Pages | 2973-2976 |
Number of pages | 4 |
Publication status | Published - Aug 2011 |
Event | 12th Annual Conference of the International Speech Communication Association, INTERSPEECH 2011 - Florence, Italy Duration: 28 Aug 2011 → 31 Aug 2011 Conference number: 12 |
Publication series
Name | |
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Publisher | International Speech Communication Association |
ISSN (Print) | 1990-9772 |
Conference
Conference | 12th Annual Conference of the International Speech Communication Association, INTERSPEECH 2011 |
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Abbreviated title | INTERSPEECH |
Country/Territory | Italy |
City | Florence |
Period | 28/08/11 → 31/08/11 |
Keywords
- METIS-279669
- IR-78349
- EWI-20721
- EC Grant Agreement nr.: FP7/231287