Estimating conversational dominance in multiparty interaction

It is important for conversational agents that manage multiparty conversations to recognize the group dynamics existing among the users. This paper proposes a method for estimating the conversational dominance of participants in group interactions. First, we conducted a Wizard-of-Oz experiment to collect conversational speech, and motion data. Then, we analyzed various paralinguistic speech and gaze behaviors to elucidate the factors that predict conversational dominance. Finally, by exploiting the speech and gaze data as estimation parameters, we created a regression model to estimate conversational dominance, and the multiple correlation coefficient of this model was 0.85.

[1]  Dirk Heylen,et al.  Dominance Detection in Meetings Using Easily Obtainable Features , 2005, MLMI.

[2]  David D. McFarland,et al.  Models of the Distribution of Acts in Small Discussion Groups , 1980 .

[3]  Eric Horvitz,et al.  Open-World Dialog: Challenges, Directions, and a Prototype , 2009 .

[4]  R. Bales.  Interaction process analysis; a method for the study of small groups. , 2013 .

[5]  J. Dovidio,et al.  Pattern of Visual Dominance Behavior in Humans , 1985 .

[6]  Samy Bengio,et al.  Learning Influence among Interacting Markov Chains , 2005, NIPS.

[7]  S. Duncan,et al.  Some Signals and Rules for Taking Speaking Turns in Conversations , 1972 .

[8]  David R. Traum,et al.  Multi-party, Multi-issue, Multi-strategy Negotiation for Multi-modal Virtual Agents , 2008, IVA.

[9]  Daniel Gatica-Perez,et al.  Detection and application of influence rankings in small group meetings , 2006, ICMI '06.

[10]  E. Goffman,et al.  Forms of talk , 1982 .

[11]  Mitsuru Ishizuka,et al.  Attentive Presentation Agents , 2007, IVA.

[12]  Akikazu Takeuchi,et al.  Social Interaction: Multimodal Conversation with Social Agents , 1994, AAAI.

[13]  M. Argyle,et al.  Gaze and Mutual Gaze , 1994, British Journal of Psychiatry.

[14]  Roel Vertegaal,et al.  The GAZE groupware system: mediating joint attention in multiparty communication and collaboration , 1999, CHI '99.

[15]  Hung-Hsuan Huang,et al.  How multiple concurrent users react to a quiz agent attentive to the dynamics of their game participation , 2010, AAMAS.

[16]  A. Kendon.  Some functions of gaze-direction in social interaction. , 1967, Acta psychologica.

[17]  M. Knapp,et al.  Nonverbal communication in human interaction , 1972 .