Multimodal Backchannel Generation for Conversational Agents

Heylen, Dirk (2007) Multimodal Backchannel Generation for Conversational Agents. In: Workshop on Multimodal Output Generation, MOG 2007, 25-26 January 2007, Aberdeen, Scotland.

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Abstract:	Listeners in face-to-face interactions are not only attending to the communicative signals being emitted by the speakers, but are sending out signals themselves in the various modalities that are available to them: facial expressions, gestures, head movements and speech. These communicative signals, operating in the so-called back-channel, mostly function as feedback on the actions of the speaker; providing information on the reception of the signals; propelling the interaction forward, marking understanding, or providing insight into the attitudes and emotions that the speech gives rise to. In order to be able to generate appropriate behaviours for a conversational agent in response to the speech of a human interlocutor we need a better understanding of the kinds of behaviours displayed, their timing, determinants, and their effects. A major challenge in generating responsive behaviours, however, is real-time interpretation, as responses in the back-channel are generally very fast. The solution to this problem has been to rely on surface level cues. We discuss on-going work on a sensitive artificial listening agent that tries to accomplish this attentive listening behaviour.
Item Type:	Conference or Workshop Item
Faculty:	Electrical Engineering, Mathematics and Computer Science (EEMCS)
Research Group:	Human Media Interaction (HMI)
Link to this item:	http://purl.utwente.nl/publications/64602
Proceedings URL:	http://www.ctit.utwente.nl/library/proceedings/MOG2007.pdf
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