Visual Intonation
Visual Intonation, a special session at Interspeech 2006
Introduction
Traditionally, the study of prosody focussed on suprasegmental features such as intonation (speech melody), rhythm, tempo, loudness, voice quality and pausing that are encoded in the speech signal itself. However, when people speak they generally do more than merely produce suprasegmental variations, they may also use facial expressions or arm and body gestures to support what they are saying. In recent years various researchers have started to explore the contribution of these visual cues to communication. There is a growing awareness that verbal and visual prosody are closely intertwined, and collectively provide utterances with 'extra' information that is often not explicitly contained in the lexical and syntactic make-up of a sentence, such as cues to information structure, feedback, turn-taking, or emotional or attitudinal aspects of utterances.
Goal
This special session brings together researchers working on all aspects of audiovisual prosody. We aim to bring together researchers from different disciplines (including speech scientists, psychologists, computer scientists and linguists) to create a better understanding of how visual and verbal prosody connect, and what the main outstanding issues are.
Format
The special session will consist of a number of selected 15 minute presentations, sandwiched in between an introduction to the field of audiovisual prosody and a final round up.
Topics
Topics for this special session include:
- Functions of audiovisual prosody
- Automatic audiovisual analysis tools
- Relation between visual and verbal prosody
- Developmental aspects of audiovisual prosody
- Cross-cultural differences in audiovisual expressivity
- Psychological models for audiovisual speech production and perception
Session co-chairs
- Emiel Krahmer, Tilburg University, E.J.Krahmer@uvt.nl
- Marc Swerts, Tilburg University, M.G.J.Swerts@uvt.nl
Submission procedure
Papers for the Visual Intonation workshop will go through the regular conference review process. Please note that the deadline for submission of 4-page full papers is April 7, 2006. Paper submission will be exclusively through the conference website, using submission guidelines to be provided. Previously-published papers should not be submitted. The corresponding author will be notified by e-mail of the paper status by June 9, 2006. Minor updates will be allowed from June 10 to June 16, 2006.