In a previous study [1] we investigated properties of communicative feedback produced by attentive and non-attentive listeners in dialogue. Distracted listeners were found to produce less feedback communicating understanding. Here, we assess the role of prosody in differentiating between feedback functions. We find significant differences across all studied prosodic dimensions as well as influences of lexical form and phonetic structure on feedback function categorisation. We also show that differences in prosodic features between attentiveness states exist, e.g., in overall intensity.

Index Terms: communicative feedback; prosody; dialogue; distraction; engagement; attention

H. Buschmeier, Z. Malisz, M. Włdarczak, S. Kopp, and P. Wagner, "‘Are you sure you're paying attention?' – ‘Uh-huh'. Communicating understanding as a marker of attentiveness," in Proceedings of INTERSPEECH 2011, Florence, Italy, 2011, pp. 2057–2060 (ISCA Archive)

@inproceedings{malisz12_lista,
  title     = {{Prosodic characteristics of feedback expressions in distracted and non-distracted listeners}},
  author    = {Zofia Malisz and Marcin Włdarczak and Hendrik Buschmeier and Stefan Kopp and Petra Wagner},
  year      = {2012},
  booktitle = {{The Listening Talker: an interdisciplinary workshop on natural and synthetic modification of speech in response to listening conditions}},
  pages     = {36--39},
}