Spotting agreement and disagreement: A survey of nonverbal audiovisual cues and tools

• Published in: 2009 3rd International Conference on Affective Computing and Intelligent Interaction and Workshops pp. 1 - 9
• Main Authors: Bousmalis, K., Mehu, M., Pantic, M.
• Format: Conference Proceeding
• Language: English
• Published: IEEE 01.09.2009
• Subjects: Application software; Arm; Audio databases; Auditory displays; Biosensors; Cameras; Context; Educational institutions; Face; Humans
• ISBN: 9781424448005; 142444800X
• ISSN: 2156-8103
• DOI: 10.1109/ACII.2009.5349477

While detecting and interpreting temporal patterns of non-verbal behavioral cues in a given context is a natural and often unconscious process for humans, it remains a rather difficult task for computer systems. Nevertheless, it is an important one to achieve if the goal is to realise a naturalistic communication between humans and machines. Machines that are able to sense social attitudes like agreement and disagreement and respond to them in a meaningful way are likely to be welcomed by users due to the more natural, efficient and human-centered interaction they are bound to experience. This paper surveys the nonverbal cues that could be present during agreement and disagreement behavioural displays and lists a number of tools that could be useful in detecting them, as well as a few publicly available databases that could be used to train these tools for analysis of spontaneous, audiovisual instances of agreement and disagreement.