ISCA Archive LW 2009
ISCA Archive LW 2009

A laughter is a laughter is a laughter? Long, but not short laughter bouts are noticed in conversation and related to conversational partners' moods

Julia Vettin, Silke Kipper

Laughter is a common ingredient of everyday conversations and accompanies verbal exchanges at remarkably high rates. Anecdotal evidence suggested, however, that people engaged in a verbal interaction are often not aware of the accompanying laughter. This might be explained by differences in the acoustic quality of laughter. For example, conversational laughter bouts are considerably shorter and consist of fewer elements than those elicited in response to humorous material or tickling. In a playback study with recordings of dyadic conversations, we tested the perception and the evaluation of conversational laughter.