Related papers: Quantifying the perceptual value of lexical and no…
People convey information extremely effectively through spoken interaction using multiple channels of information transmission: the lexical channel of what is said, and the non-lexical channel of how it is said. We propose studying human…
Speech is a multiplexed signal displaying levels of complexity, organizational principles and perceptual units of analysis at distinct timescales. This critical acoustic signal for human communication is thus characterized at distinct…
Emphasis is a crucial component in human communication, which indicates the speaker's intention and implication beyond pure text in dialogue. While Large Language Models (LLMs) have revolutionized natural language processing, their ability…
Language understanding (LU) and dialogue policy learning are two essential components in conversational systems. Human-human dialogues are not well-controlled and often random and unpredictable due to their own goals and speaking habits.…
While the effect of various lexical, syntactic, semantic and stylistic features have been addressed in persuasive language from a computational point of view, the persuasive effect of phonetics has received little attention. By modeling a…
Prosody -- the melody of speech -- conveys critical information often not captured by the words or text of a message. In this paper, we propose an information-theoretic approach to quantify how much information is expressed by prosody alone…
An intrinsic aspect of every conversation is the way talk-time is shared between multiple speakers. Conversations can be balanced, with each speaker claiming a similar amount of talk-time, or imbalanced when one talks disproportionately.…
Online discourse is often perceived as polarized and unproductive. While some conversational discourse parsing frameworks are available, they do not naturally lend themselves to the analysis of contentious and polarizing discussions.…
While cross-linguistic model transfer is effective in many settings, there is still limited understanding of the conditions under which it works. In this paper, we focus on assessing the role of lexical semantics in cross-lingual transfer,…
The increasing reliance on digital information necessitates advancements in conversational search systems, particularly in terms of information transparency. While prior research in conversational information-seeking has concentrated on…
Studies across many disciplines have shown that lexical choice can affect audience perception. For example, how users describe themselves in a social media profile can affect their perceived socio-economic status. However, we lack general…
Unlike other data modalities such as text and vision, speech does not lend itself to easy interpretation. While lay people can understand how to describe an image or sentence via perception, non-expert descriptions of speech often end at…
Text-based explanation is a particularly promising approach in explainable AI, but the evaluation of text explanations is method-dependent. We argue that placing the explanations on an information-theoretic framework could unify the…
Understanding toxicity in user conversations is undoubtedly an important problem. Addressing "covert" or implicit cases of toxicity is particularly hard and requires context. Very few previous studies have analysed the influence of…
We present information value, a measure which quantifies the predictability of an utterance relative to a set of plausible alternatives. We introduce a method to obtain interpretable estimates of information value using neural text…
Linguistic relations in oral conversations present how opinions are constructed and developed in a restricted time. The relations bond ideas, arguments, thoughts, and feelings, re-shape them during a speech, and finally build knowledge out…
We conducted an empirical analysis into the relation between control and discourse structure. We applied control criteria to four dialogues and identified 3 levels of discourse structure. We investigated the mechanism for changing control…
In spoken communication, information is transmitted not only via words, but also through a rich array of non-verbal signals, including prosody--the non-segmental auditory features of speech. Do these different communication channels carry…
In the era of digitalization, as individuals increasingly rely on digital platforms for communication and news consumption, various actors employ linguistic strategies to influence public perception. While models have become proficient at…
Why do some speakers capture a room almost instantly while others fail to connect? The real-time architecture of audience engagement remains largely a black box. Here, we used motion-captured animations to present the pure nonverbal…