KTH-TMH Stockholmloredana@speech.kth.se

 

Looking for feedback expressions

in speech corpora

General idea

Study of the distribution, typology, use and function of verbal and non-verbal feedback expressions in human communication and in human machine communication.

Why?

Try to model human behaviour and try to reproduce it in speech technology application

Definition of feedback in human communcation

Allwood JAllwood J. et al. et al. 1992, On the semantics and pragmatics of linguistic feedback. 1992, On the semantics and pragmatics of linguistic feedback

“Control strategies of the channel of communication and of the informative flux, used by participant to a conversation to support the interaction”.

”Feedback mechanism is one of the most important cohesion devices in human conversation”

”Feedback consists of a set of verbal and bodily means used, in a minimal intrusive way, both to elicit and give information about the basic communicative functions: contact, perception, comprehension, attitudinal reactions”

General ways of expressing verbal feedback

• short verbal expressions: yes, no, ok together with some prosodical and phonological phenomena (like varying pitch contour and vocalic lengthening)

• short non lexical items: ah, ah-ah, mm, mh-mh

• repetition: either the last word uttered by the interlocutor or by repeating the core words of the last sentence

• reformulation: of the meaning of the received message.

General ways of expressing non-verbal feedback

• Facial expressions: smile, eyebrow rising, gaze.

• Head movements: nods, shakes, tilts ..

• Gestures: hand, shoulder movements • Postures: trunk position.

-Combination of verbal and non verbal expressions

Looking for verbal feedback expressions in a corpus of Italian spoken dialogues (human-human

communication)Material: • 12 spontaneous-elicited dialogues of ca. 12

minutes each

• AVIP database: Archive of Spoken Italian VarietiesNapoli, Bari, Pisa

(Collected in 1998-1999, it containes 16 dialogues transcribed at different levels: ortographic, phonetic, phonemic, prosodic and DA)

• Map task technique

Cerrato L. 1999

Map task technique

Go straight till the lake, then at the park turn left.

Yes…park? What park?

I don´t have any parks

GIVER FOLLOWEROnly audio recordings

Task-oriented conversation

Giver: gives instruction

Follower: receives the instruction to accomplish the task

the auditive channel of communication is maximisedno visual channel, therefore feedback expressions are produced in a great number.

Analysis

1) Identification and labeling of feedback2) Distributional analysis 3) Acoustic phonetic analysis:

– Duration and Pitch contour analysis With the aim of detecting acoustic cues related to the function

carried out by feedback expressions:• show attention/continuation of contact• aknowledge reception• agreement, acceptance• refusal• require clarifications• require further explanation• require further indications • show reception and acquisition of knowledge

Distribution of feedback expressions

• 1/3 of the turns consist of feedback expressions If a dialogue counts c.a 260 turns,

90 are feedback expressions

• Feedback is expressed in a non-intrusive way

• Distinction between giving and requesting feedback

• Regional variants

A contradiction: if feedback is expressed in a ”non-intrusive way” can it be counted as a turn of its own?

Characterisazion of feedback expressions and their functions

Type of expression

Minimal responses mmh

ah

si

no

Function

•show attention,continuation of contact

•acknowledge reception

•agreement, acceptance

•refusal

F0 contour

F0 flat or slightly falling

Extended responses•Repetitions

•Reformulations

•Questions

•require clarifications

•require further explanation

•require further indications

•show reception and acquisition of knowledge

Rising F0

Intentional F0 variation can modify the meaning of the feedback

expression

• “Ah”: acquisition of knowledge

– Flat F0: the acquired knowledge satisfies a previous need of the listener

– Rising-falling F0: the information received doesn’t satisfy a need, but

disappoints the listener

Looking for verbal feedback expressions in a corpus of Swedish spoken dialogues (human-human

communication)Material: 4 real dialogues between

1 travel agent and 4 customers recorded in a travel agency in Gothenburg

Göteborg Spoken Language Corpus.

Cerrato, L. 2002a

Analysis

1) Identification and labeling of feedback2) Distributional analysis 3) Analysis of its function:

– show continuation of contact and perception– acknowledge comprehension– express a point of view (attitudinal reactions)

4) Acoustic phonetic analysis:– Duration and Pitch contour analysis

Results: Customers-agent distribution for each dialogue

• The number of feedback expressions of the customers reaches more than 50% in all the dialogues.

0%

10%

20%

30%

40%

50%

60%

70%

80%

90%

100%

dial 1 dial 2 dial 3 dial 4

C feedback

A feedback

Feedback functions

0%

10%

20%

30%

40%

50%

60%

70%

dial 1 dial 2 dial 3 dial 4

continuation

aknow ledgement

point of view

Customers

0%

10%

20%

30%

40%

50%

60%

dial 1 dial 2 dial 3 dial 4

continuation

acknowledgement

point of view

Agent

Continuation of contact

Acknowledgement of information

Expression of a point of view

Results of the acoustic analysis

 short duration and flat pitch contour – active listening attitude

– not intend to take the turn;

  longer duration and rising pitch contour – active listening attitude intention to take the turn

0 550 ms

0 290 ms

Conclusions on feedback

• It is possible to categorize verbal feedback expressions according to their typology and to the meaning they convey.

• Intentional variation of F0 seems to play an important role for assigning a particular meaning to the expressions used.

• Question and hypothesis:

Is it possible to categorize visual feedback in the same way?

The study of ”visual feedback”in collaboration with Jens Allwod & c.

• What is the relation between co-occurring visual and verbal feedback expressions?

– Do visual expressions emphasise the meaning of the verbal expression?

– Or do they convey different shades of meaning?

• When visual feedback occur independently of verbal feedback expressions what is its function and meaning?

Need for a multimodal database

Feedback expressions are produced along different modalities • Verbal: words and sentences

• Prosodic: speech rhythm, pauses, intensity, stress, intonation

• Gestural: hand and arm movements

• Facial: head and eye movement, gaze, smile and other facial expressions

• Bodily: posture, trunk and leg movements

Feedback coding in a ”multimodal corpus”

• Tool: Multitool (Leif Grönqvist, Magnus Gunnarsson)

• Corpus: GSLC- Travel agency activity• Annotation: Multitier annotation of feedback

expressionsText: transcription (MSO) Function: reports the function of the feedback

expression and the function of the utterance that precede the feedback expression

Gesture: reports the “non-verbal feedback expressions”, analysed in terms of movements.

Gaze: [should] report the direction of the speakers’ gaze

Feedback in human machine interactions

System’s feedback• Process feedback

– ”I am active” ”I am retrieving information”

• Information feedback– ”I have understood”: explicit,

implicit feedback that indicates the reception and comprehension of the message

Explicit feedback:User: I want to go to LondonSystem: did you say you wanted to go to London?Implicit feedback: User: I want to go to LondonSystem: At what time do you wish to arrive in London?

Users’ feedback

Explicit, Implicit

To show:

Perception,

Understanding

Acknowledgement

Acceptation,

Refusal

Ecc.

Analysis of users’ feedback in human-machine interactions

AUGUST• 18% of users (of 1206)

gave feedback at least once• 6% of utterances (of 6876)

contained feedback expressions

• In 89% of these cases, feedback appeared in a turn of its own.

ADAPT94% of users (of 33) gave feedback at least once18% of utterances (of 1845) contained feedback expressionsOnly in 6% of these cases, feedback appeared in a turn of its own (it occurred mostly at the beginning of longer sentences)

Results adapted from Bell L. & Gustafson J. 2000;

August

•August was an experimental spoken dialogue system able to give information about tourist sights and restaurants in Stockholm, about KTH and the life and works of August Strindberg.•The August database counts more than 10.000 utterances produced by 2685 users, all visitors at the Stockholm Cultural Centre, where the dialogue system was displayed as part of the Cultural Capital of Europe '98 program.

AdaptAdapt is an experimental dialogue system in the domain of Stockholm’ s real-estate.

The Adapt database was collected in 1999 by means of the Wizard of Oz technique.

It includes a total of 50 dialogues produced by 33 users.

Comparison between feedback strategies in Human-human communication and in

human-machine communication

• Material: 4 dialogues from GCSL and 4 dialogues from ADAPT

• Method:Distributional, functional and acoustic analysis

• Results:1. Humans produce feedback also when interacting with

machines, but in different ways. 2. The majority of feedback expressions in GSLC travel agency

dialogues consist of short monosyllabic words produced often on their own in a non-intrusive way.

3. In the interaction with ADAPT this kind of short feedback were never produced, they rather appeared at the beginning of longer sentences.

Cerrato L. 2002b

Measuring head movements related to feedback

in collaboration with Linköping university Quantitative measurement of the entity of head

movement related to feedback expressions with the Qualisys MacReflex motion tracking system.

A pilot study: • recording of 4 elicited dialogues between humans recorded in

controlled situation,• transcription and coding of the dialogues• identification of “typical visual” feedback• quantification of the movements• implementation of the results in talking heads to make them look

more natural.

Main References

• Allwod J ., 1999, The Swedish Spoken Language Corpus at Göteborg University. In Proceedings of Fonetik 99, Gothenburg Papers in Theoretical Linguistics 81.

• Allwod J., Nivre J., Ahlsén E. , 1992, On the Semantics and Pragmatics of Linguistic Feedback in Journal of Semantics 64.

• Allwood J., Grönqvist L., Ahlsén E., Gunnarsson M. ,2002 Annotations and Tools for an Activity Based Spoken Language Corpus", Proc. of 2nd SIGdial Workshop on Discourse and Dialogue, Aalborg, Denmark

• Bell L & Gustafson .,2000 Positive and negative user feedback in a spoken dialogue corpus, In Proc of ICSLP 2000, Beijing, China.

• Cerrato L, 1999 Il feedback verbale in dialoghi elicitati con la tecnica del map task. In Atti del GFS 10 Napoli, Italia, 25-35

• Cerrato L. 2002a, Some charactersitcs of feedback expressions in Swedish, in TMH.OPSR Vol.43 Fonetik 2002 p. 101-104

• Cerrato L. 2002b, A comparison between feedback strategies in Human-Human and Human-machine communciation in proceedings of ICSLP-2002, Denver, Colorado USA, (in press)