Identifying Personality Traits Using Overlap Dynamics in Multiparty Dialogue

Research on human spoken language has shown that speech plays an important role in identifying speaker personality traits. In this work, we propose an approach for identifying speaker personality traits using overlap dynamics in multiparty spoken dialogues. We first define a set of novel features representing the overlap dynamics of each speaker. We then investigate the impact of speaker personality traits on these features using ANOVA tests. We find that features of overlap dynamics significantly vary for speakers with different levels of both Extraversion and Conscientiousness. Finally, we find that classifiers using only overlap dynamics features outperform random guessing in identifying Extraversion and Agreeableness, and that the improvements are statistically significant.Comment: Proceedings Interspeech 2019, Graz, Austria, Septembe

Classification of cooperative and competitive overlaps in speech using cues from the context, overlapper, and overlappee

One of the major properties of overlapping speech is that it can be perceived as competitive or cooperative. For the development of real-time spoken dialog systems and the analysis of affective and social human behavior in conversations, it is important to (automatically) distinguish between these two types of overlap. We investigate acoustic characteristics of cooperative and competitive overlaps with the aim to develop automatic classifiers for the classification of overlaps. In addition to acoustic features, we also use information from gaze and head movement annotations. Contexts preceding and during the overlap are taken into account, as well as the behaviors of both the overlapper and the overlappee. We compare various feature sets in classification experiments that are performed on the AMI corpus. The best performances obtained lie around 27%–30% EER

THE ROLE OF PRAGMATIC LANGUAGE USE IN MEDIATING THE RELATION BETWEEN ADHD SYMPTOMATOLOGY AND SOCIAL SKILLS

The goal of the current study was to investigate the social skills of a community sample of children that would vary in their level of ADHD symptomatology (e.g., inattention and hyperactivity), with a specific focus on their communication patterns and pragmatic language use (PLU). The study explored whether PLU was associated with, and perhaps accounted for, the social skills problems children with different degrees of ADHD symptomatology experience. Pragmatic language use, ADHD symptomatology, and social skills were examined with traditional standardized measures as well as a detailed investigation of communication patterns and PLU obtained from sampling behaviors from a semi-structured dyadic communication task. A community sample of 54 children between the ages of 9 and 11 years participated. Pragmatic language use partially mediated the relation between ADHD symptomatology and social skills. These results indicate that although the correlation between ADHD and social skills drops from r = -.649, p \u3c .01 to r = -.478, p \u3c .01, when PLU is entered in the model, the correlation between ADHD and social skills still remains significant. Further, ADHD symptomatology and PLU both predicted social skills scores, and although ADHD symptomatology and PLU were related to one another, PLU provided a unique contribution in the estimate of children’s social skills of 10.5% above and beyond the contribution of ADHD symptomatology. However, ADHD symptomatology was the most influential predictor in uniquely accounting for approximately 19% of the differences in social skills outcomes above and beyond the contribution of PLU. Possible explanations as to why PLU mediates the relation between ADHD symptomatology and social skills are discussed. Implications and future research are discussed in terms of children with ADHD and peer relations

Communication as power : the relationship to marital satisfaction

This study focused on communication as a form of power and its impact on marital satisfaction. Specifically, females may appear to have more power because they speak more often in conversations. However, when dissected, the amount women speak may be a result of lower power status, requiring them to work harder to achieve their desired level of power in the relationship. Successful talkovers, unsuccessful talkovers, support statements, and nonsupport statements were examined to determine their impact on couples\u27 marital satisfaction. Secondary data was utilized for the current study; the original study pertained to the investigation of the relationship between physiological arousal and demand/withdraw patterns. Seventy-three married couples (73 men and 73 women) were recruited for the original study via newspaper advertisements, advertisements posted on bulletin boards, and word-of-mouth in the local schools and community. Paired t-tests and simple linear regression analyses revealed that males\u27 and females\u27 unsuccessful talkover ratios and nonsupport statement ratios were significantly different. In addition, successful talkovers, unsuccessful talkovers, support statements, and nonsupport statements were not found to significantly influence males\u27 or females\u27 marital satisfaction. Relevance to family therapy and clinical implications are discussed

Investigating Automatic Measurements of Prosodic Accommodation and Its Dynamics in Social Interaction

Spoken dialogue systems are increasingly being used to facilitate and enhance human communication. While these interactive systems can process the linguistic aspects of human communication, they are not yet capable of processing the complex dynamics involved in social interaction, such as the adaptation on the part of interlocutors. Providing interactive systems with the capacity to process and exhibit this accommodation could however improve their efficiency and make machines more socially-competent interactants. At present, no automatic system is available to process prosodic accommodation, nor do any clear measures exist that quantify its dynamic manifestation. While it can be observed to be a monotonically manifest property, it is our hypotheses that it evolves dynamically with functional social aspects. In this paper, we propose an automatic system for its measurement and the capture of its dynamic manifestation. We investigate the evolution of prosodic accommodation in 41 Japanese dyadic telephone conversations and discuss its manifestation in relation to its functions in social interaction. Overall, our study shows that prosodic accommodation changes dynamically over the course of a conversation and across conversations, and that these dynamics inform about the naturalness of the conversation flow, the speakers’ degree of involvement and their affinity in the conversation

Continuous Interaction with a Virtual Human

Attentive Speaking and Active Listening require that a Virtual Human be capable of simultaneous perception/interpretation and production of communicative behavior. A Virtual Human should be able to signal its attitude and attention while it is listening to its interaction partner, and be able to attend to its interaction partner while it is speaking – and modify its communicative behavior on-the-fly based on what it perceives from its partner. This report presents the results of a four week summer project that was part of eNTERFACE’10. The project resulted in progress on several aspects of continuous interaction such as scheduling and interrupting multimodal behavior, automatic classification of listener responses, generation of response eliciting behavior, and models for appropriate reactions to listener responses. A pilot user study was conducted with ten participants. In addition, the project yielded a number of deliverables that are released for public access

MUVTIME: a Multivariate time series visualizer for behavioral science

As behavioral science becomes progressively more data driven, the need is increasing for appropriate tools for visual exploration and analysis of large datasets, often formed by multivariate time series. This paper describes MUVTIME, a multimodal time series visualization tool, developed in Matlab that allows a user to load a time series collection (a multivariate time series dataset) and an associated video. The user can plot several time series on MUVTIME and use one of them to do brushing on the displayed data, i.e. select a time range dynamically and have it updated on the display. The tool also features a categorical visualization of two binary time series that works as a high-level descriptor of the coordination between two interacting partners. The paper reports the successful use of MUVTIME under the scope of project TURNTAKE, which was intended to contribute to the improvement of human-robot interaction systems by studying turn- taking dynamics (role interchange) in parent-child dyads during joint action.Marie Curie International Incoming Fellowship PIIF-GA-2011- 301155; Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology (FCT) project PTDC/PSI- PCO/121494/2010; AFP was also partially funded by the FCT project (IF/00217/2013)This research was supported by: Marie Curie International Incoming Fellowship PIIF-GA-2011301155; Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology (FCT) Strategic program FCT UID/EEA/00066/2013; FCT project PTDC/PSIPCO/121494/2010. AFP was also partially funded by the FCT project (IF/00217/2013). REFERENCE