Abstract
We evaluate multimodal rule-based strategies for backchannel (BC) generation in face-to-face conversations. Such strategies can be used by artificial listeners to determine when to produce a BC in dialogs with human speakers. In this research, we consider features from the speaker’s speech and gaze. We used six rule-based strategies to determine the placement of BCs. The BCs were performed by an intelligent virtual agent using nods and vocalizations. In a user perception experiment, participants were shown video fragments of a human speaker together with an artificial listener who produced BC behavior according to one of the strategies. Participants were asked to rate how likely they thought the BC behavior had been performed by a human listener. We found that the number, timing and type of BC had a significant effect on how human-like the BC behavior was perceived.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
References
Bavelas, J.B., Coates, L., Johnson, T.: Listeners as co-narrators. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 79(6), 941–952 (2000)
Duncan Jr., S.: On the structure of speaker-auditor interaction during speaking turns. Language in Society 3(2), 161–180 (1974)
Yngve, V.H.: On getting a word in edgewise. In: Papers from the Sixth Regional Meeting of Chicago Linguistic Society, pp. 567–577. Chicago Linguistic Society (1970)
Bertrand, R., Ferré, G., Blache, P., Espesser, R., Rauzy, S.: Backchannels revisited from a multimodal perspective. In: Proceedings of Auditory-visual Speech Processing, Hilvarenbeek, The Netherlands, pp. 1–5 (August 2007)
Gravano, A., Hirschberg, J.: Backchannel-inviting cues in task-oriented dialogue. In: Proceedings of Interspeech, Brighton, UK, pp. 1019–1022 (September 2009)
Noguchi, H., Den, Y.: Prosody-based detection of the context of backchannel responses. In: Proceedings of the International Conference on Spoken Language Processing (ICSLP), Sydney, Australia, pp. 487–490 (November 1998)
Okato, Y., Kato, K., Yamamoto, M., Itahashi, S.: Insertion of interjectory response based on prosodic information. In: Proceedings of the IEEE Workshop Interactive Voice Technology for Telecommunication Applications, Basking Ridge, NJ, pp. 85–88 (1996)
Ward, N., Tsukahara, W.: Prosodic features which cue back-channel responses in English and Japanese. Journal of Pragmatics 32(8), 1177–1207 (2000)
Dittmann, A.T., Llewellyn, L.G.: Relationship between vocalizations and head nods as listener responses. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 9(1), 79–84 (1968)
Morency, L.P., de Kok, I., Gratch, J.: A probabilistic multimodal approach for predicting listener backchannels. Autonomous Agents and Multi-Agent Systems 20(1), 80–84 (2010)
Huang, L., Morency, L.-P., Gratch, J.: Parasocial consensus sampling: Combining multiple perspectives to learn virtual human behavior. In: Proceedings of the International Conference on Autonomous Agents and Multiagent Systems (AAMAS), Toronto, Canada (to appear, 2010)
Duncan Jr., S.: Some signals and rules for taking speaking turns in conversations. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 23(2), 283–292 (1972)
Dittmann, A.T., Llewellyn, L.G.: The phonemic clause as a unit of speech decoding. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 6(3), 341–349 (1967)
Kendon, A.: Some functions of gaze direction in social interaction. Acta Psychologica 26(1), 22–63 (1967)
Bavelas, J.B., Coates, L., Johnson, T.: Listener responses as a collaborative process: The role of gaze. Journal of Communication 52(3), 566–580 (2002)
Cathcart, N., Carletta, J., Klein, E.: A shallow model of backchannel continuers in spoken dialogue. In: Proceedings of the Conference of the European chapter of the Association for Computational Linguistics, Budapest, Hungary, vol. 1, pp. 51–58 (2003)
Maatman, M., Gratch, J., Marsella, S.: Natural behavior of a listening agent. In: Panayiotopoulos, T., Gratch, J., Aylett, R.S., Ballin, D., Olivier, P., Rist, T. (eds.) IVA 2005. LNCS (LNAI), vol. 3661, pp. 25–36. Springer, Heidelberg (2005)
Gratch, J., Okhmatovskaia, A., Lamothe, F., Marsella, S., Morales, M., van der Werf, R.J., Morency, L.P.: Virtual rapport. In: Gratch, J., Young, M., Aylett, R.S., Ballin, D., Olivier, P. (eds.) IVA 2006. LNCS (LNAI), vol. 4133, pp. 14–27. Springer, Heidelberg (2006)
Heylen, D., Bevacqua, E., Tellier, M., Pelachaud, C.: Searching for prototypical facial feedback signals. In: Pelachaud, C., Martin, J.-C., André, E., Chollet, G., Karpouzis, K., Pelé, D. (eds.) IVA 2007. LNCS (LNAI), vol. 4722, pp. 147–153. Springer, Heidelberg (2007)
Granström, B., House, D., Swerts, M.: Multimodal feedback cues in human-machine interactions. In: Proceedings of the International Conference on Speech Prosody, Aix-en-Provence, France, pp. 11–14 (2002)
Valstar, M.F., McKeown, G., Cowie, R., Pantic, M.: The Semaine corpus of emotionally coloured character interactions. In: Proceedings of the International Conference on Multimedia & Expo, Singapore, Singapore (to appear, 2010)
Boersma, P., Weenink, D.: Praat: doing phonetics by computer. Software (2009), http://www.praat.org
Van Welbergen, H., Reidsma, D., Ruttkay, Z., Zwiers, J.: Elckerlyc - A BML realizer for continuous, multimodal interaction with a virtual human. Journal of Multimodal User Interfaces (to appear, 2010)
Jonsdottir, G.R., Gratch, J., Fast, E., Thórisson, K.R.: Fluid semantic back-channel feedback in dialogue: Challenges and progress. In: Pelachaud, C., Martin, J.-C., André, E., Chollet, G., Karpouzis, K., Pelé, D. (eds.) IVA 2007. LNCS (LNAI), vol. 4722, pp. 154–160. Springer, Heidelberg (2007)
Truong, K.P., Poppe, R., Heylen, D.: A rule-based backchannel prediction model using pitch and pause information. In: Proceedings of Interspeech, Makuhari, Japan (to appear, 2010)
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2010 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg
About this paper
Cite this paper
Poppe, R., Truong, K.P., Reidsma, D., Heylen, D. (2010). Backchannel Strategies for Artificial Listeners. In: Allbeck, J., Badler, N., Bickmore, T., Pelachaud, C., Safonova, A. (eds) Intelligent Virtual Agents. IVA 2010. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 6356. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-15892-6_16
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-15892-6_16
Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg
Print ISBN: 978-3-642-15891-9
Online ISBN: 978-3-642-15892-6
eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)