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The present paper examines the child's use of deictic gestures in the process of topical co-operation with his father. The method for the study is qualitative and data driven conversation analysis based on examining communicative practices in natural settings. The database is composed of videotaped naturalistic picture book conversations between the child (at the age from 1 to 2 years) and the adult. For the current paper, the sample of data is transcribed and analyzed focusing on the sequential organization of the participants' verbal and nonverbal action (gestures, gaze, vocalizations and adult's speech) focusing the analysis on referential actions in the sequence in which the topic is extended from the referent in the picture book to the referent outside the book. More specifically, the focus is on how both the verbal and nonverbal referential resources reveal the participants' orientations in the on-going interaction, creating a shared referential focus. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents an analysis of several recorded conversations and shows that dialogue utterances can be categorised into two main types: (a) those whose primary function is to impart novel information, or propositional content, and (b) those whose primary function is to relay discourse-related and interpersonal or affect-related information. Whereas the former have characteristics that are closer to read speech, the latter are more varying in their prosody and present a considerable challenge to current speech synthesis systems. The paper shows that these apparently simple utterances are both very frequent and very variable, and illustrates with examples why they present such a difficult challenge to current speech processing methods and synthesis techniques. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Considering the role that speech pauses play in communication we speculate on the possibility that holds (or gesture pauses) may serve to similar purposes supporting the view that gestures as language are an expressive resource that can take on different functions depending on the communicative demand. The data reported in the present paper seem to support this hypothesis, showing that 93% of the children and 78% of the adult speech pause variation is predictable from holds, suggesting that at the least to some extent, the function of holds may be thought to be similar to speech pauses. While speech pauses are likely to play the role of signalling mental activation processes aimed at replacing the “old spoken content” of an “utterance” with a new one, holds may signal mental activation processes aimed at replacing the “old visible bodily actions” (intimately involved in the semantic and/or pragmatic contents of the old “utterance”) with new bodily actions reflecting the representational and/or propositional contribution that gestures are engaged to convey in the new “utterance”. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper illustrates the need for study of the interdependencies between verbal and nonverbal behavior treated as a unified form of activity, manifesting itself in face-to-face communication. Invoking the principles of Human-Centered Linguistics the author treats communication not as something passed on via language, but rather as something to which language merely contributes. One of the consequences of such an approach to this issue is a reassignment of focus. Rather than attention being drawn to linguistic phenomena, the spotlight is on the communicative properties of the interlocutors, creatively utilizing various elements of the interactional “symbolic spaces.” With reference to the above, the communicative action is perceived as a function of choices correlating verbal and nonverbal signs and signals. Light is also shed on the advantages stemming from an integrated modeling of communicative phenomena. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Nowadays, successful pause detection plays an important role not only in the process of speech recognition and speech coding but also in the biometrical field for detecting stress in the speaker's emotional state due to uncomfortable situations or in interactive dialog systems for making more natural the human-machine interaction more natural. Most of the recordings exploited in practical applications are made under adverse conditions and few algorithms have been proposed to handle noisy conditions. This paper proposes two methods for non-speech activity pause detection in spontaneous speech recordings made in noisy environments. The input signal is transformed into log spectral energy and is divided into specific frequency bands. Each band is smoothed and tracked by dynamically adjusted thresholds based on noise energy estimation. Thresholds are adapted taking into account the dynamic changes of the speech signal under environmental noise. The proposed methods run in real time and do not require a priori knowledge of the SNR and a priori threshold values. Experimental results show that their performance is comparable with standard VADs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Intonation contributes to conveying information on speakers' regional accent personal trait, as accent identifies a person as belonging to a specific linguistic sub-community. In this paper a discussion on this topic is presented, taking Italian as an example of descriptive aspects of regional variation in intonation, and on German language as a case study on the perceptual identification of varieties by relying on intonation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Face recognition is one of the most successful ways for biometric recognition. One of its advantages is the high social acceptance by users, because it does not have the criminal stigma associated to other biometric traits, such as fingerprints. On the other hand, face is also suitable for facial expression analysis and emotion analysis, which can be useful for user convenience systems, where the computer can interact in a more intelligent way with the user. In addition, the cost of a webcam can be below 20 EUR, which is certainly lower than other biometric acquisition devices. This paper provides an overview of face recognition with special emphasis on biometric recognition (identification/ verification). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We describe here our first effort for developing a virtual talking head able to engage a situated face-to-face interaction with a human partner. This paper concentrates on the low-level components of this interaction loop and the cognitive impact of the implementation of mutual attention and multimodal deixis on the communication task. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In future Ambient Intelligence environments we assume intelligence embedded in the environment and its virtual, sometimes visualized agents (virtual humans). These environments support the human inhabitants or visitors in their activities and interactions by perceiving them through their sensors. In this paper we look at our research on bodily and gestural interaction with environments equipped with simple sensors, application-dependent intelligence, and an embodied virtual agent employed in the display of reactive and pro-active activity. The virtual humans we discuss play roles such as dance partner, conductor or trainer. All of them require the perception and the generation of bodily activity and other display of nonverbal communication. The role of affect and persuasion in these ambient entertainment environments is touched upon. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Biometric recognition and authentication based on face recognitions can actually be used in many real-time applications such as surveillance, security systems, access control, and much more. For these purposes systems have to grant a fast computational speed but also robustness to illumination and facial expressions variations. In this paper we propose a very fast image pre-processing by the introduction of a linearly shaded elliptical mask centered over the faces. Simulation results, over the AR Database, show that the proposed method leads to a significant performance improvement in identification, using both eigenfaces and DCT with Nearest Neighbour and RBF Neural Network, without modifying the global computational weight. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This volume brings together the invited papers and selected participants' contributions presented at the International NATO-ASI Summer School on “Fundamentals of Verbal and Nonverbal Communication and the Biometrical Issue”, held in Vietri sul Mare, Italy, September 2–12, 2006. The School was jointly organized by the Faculty of Science and the Faculty of Psychology of the SECOND UNIVERSITY OF NAPLESCasertaItalythe INTERNATIONAL INSTITUTE for ADVANCED SCIENTIFIC STUDIES “Eduardo R. Caianiello” (IIASS), Vietri sul Mare, Italy, the ETTORE MAJORANA FOUNDATION and CENTRE FOR SCIENTIFIC CULTURE (EMFCSC), Erice, Italy, and the Department of Physics, UNIVERSITY OF SALERNO, Italy. The School was a NATO event, and although it was mainly sponsored by the NATO Programme SECURITY THROUGH SCIENCE, it also received contributions from the INTERNATIONAL SPEECH COMMUNICATION SOCIETY (ISCA) and the INTERNATIONAL SOCIETY OF PHONETIC SCIENCES (ISPhS), as well as from the abovementioned organizing Institutions. The main theme of the school was the fundamental features of verbal and nonverbal communication and their relationships with the identification of a person, his/her socio-cultural background and personal traits. The problem of understanding human behaviour in terms of personal traits, and the possibility of an algorithmic implementation that exploits personal traits to identify a person unambiguously, are among the great challenges of modern science and technology. On the one hand, there is the theoretical question of what makes each individual unique among all others that share similar traits, and what makes a culture unique among various cultures. On the other hand, there is the technological need to be able to protect people from individual disturbance and dangerous behaviour that could damage an entire community. As regards to the problem of understanding human behaviour, one of the most interesting research areas is that related to human interaction and face-to-face communication. It is in this context that knowledge is shared and personal traits acquire their significance. In the past decade, a number of different research communities within the psychological and computational sciences have tried to characterize human behaviour in face-to-face communication through several features that describe relationships between facial expressions and prosodic/voice quality; differences between formal and informal communication modes; cultural differences and individual and socio-cultural variations; stable personality traits and their degree of expressiveness and emphasis, as well as the individuation of emotional and psychological states of the interlocutors. There has been substantial progress in these different communities and surprising convergence, and the growing interest of researchers in understanding the essential unity of the field makes the current intellectual climate an ideal one for organizing a Summer School devoted to the study of verbal and nonverbal aspects of face-to-face communication and of how they could be used to characterize individual behaviour. The basic intention of the event was to provide broad coverage of the major developments in the area of biometrics as well as the recent research on verbal and nonverbal features exploited in face-to-face communication. The focus of the lectures and the discussions was primarily on deepening the connections between the emerging field of technology devoted to the identification of individuals using biological traits (such as voice, face, fingerprints, and iris recognition) and the fundamentals of verbal and nonverbal communication which includes facial expressions, tones of voice, gestures, eye contact, spatial arrangements, patterns of touch, expressive movement, cultural differences, and other “nonverbal” acts. The main objective of the organizers was to bring together some of the leading experts from both fields and, by presenting recent advances in the two disciplines, provide an opportunity for cross-fertilization of ideas and for mapping out territory for future research and possible cooperation. The lectures and discussions clearly revealed that research in biometrics could profit from a deeper connection with the field of verbal and nonverbal communication, where personal traits are analyzed in the context of human interaction and the communication Gestalt. Several key aspects were considered, such as the integration of algorithms and procedures for the recognition of emotional states, gesture, speech and facial expressions, in anticipation of the implementation of other useful applications such as intelligent avatars and interactive dialog systems. Features of verbal and nonverbal communication were studied in detail and their links to mathematics and statistics were made clear with the aim of identifying useful models for biometric applications. Recent advances in biometrics application were presented, [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An index of authors who submitted their papers for publication in this journal is presented.