Syncing up for a good conversation: A clinically-meaningful methodology for capturing conversational entrainment in the speech domain

Principal Investigator(s):  View help for Principal Investigator(s) Stephanie A. Borrie, Utah State University; Tyson S. Barrett, Utah State University; Megan Willi, Arizona State University; Visar Berisha, Arizona State University

Version:  View help for Version V2

Name File Type Size Last Modified
  CRQA_Fits 05/16/2018 05:24:PM
CRQA_CV.R text/x-r-syntax 11.8 KB 05/16/2018 01:26:PM
Fig1_Task.pdf application/pdf 6.4 KB 08/18/2018 10:50:PM
JSLHR_Full_Task.Rmd text/plain 20.2 KB 08/18/2018 11:04:PM
JSLHR_Full_Task.html application/xhtml+xml 844.4 KB 08/18/2018 11:04:PM
README text/plain 1.5 KB 07/30/2018 12:48:PM
Real_Wide_ICA.rds application/octet-stream 1.2 MB 05/16/2018 01:10:PM
Sham_Wide_ICA.rds application/octet-stream 6.8 MB 05/10/2018 01:35:PM
efficiency.csv text/csv 645 bytes 08/18/2018 10:52:PM

Project Citation: 

Borrie, Stephanie A., Barrett, Tyson S., Willi, Megan, and Berisha, Visar. Syncing up for a good conversation: A clinically-meaningful methodology for capturing conversational entrainment in the speech domain. Ann Arbor, MI: Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research [distributor], 2018-08-19. https://doi.org/10.3886/E102720V2

Project Description

Summary:  View help for Summary Purpose: Conversational entrainment, the phenomenon whereby communication partners align their behavior with one another, is considered essential for productive and fulfilling conversation. Lack of entrainment could, therefore, negatively impact conversational success. While studied in many disciplines, entrainment has received limited attention in the field of speech-language pathology, where its implications may have direct clinical relevance. 

Method: A novel computational methodology, informed by expert clinical assessment of conversation, was developed to investigate conversational entrainment across multiple speech dimensions in a corpus of experimentally elicited conversations involving healthy participants. The predictive relationship between the methodology output and an objective measure of conversational success, communicative efficiency, was then examined.

Results: Using a real versus sham validation procedure, we find evidence of sustained entrainment in rhythmic, articulatory and phonatory dimensions of speech. We further validate the methodology, showing that models built on speech signal entrainment measures consistently outperform models built on non-entrained speech signal measures in predicting communicative efficiency of the conversations.

Conclusions: A multidimensional, clinically-meaningful methodology for capturing conversational entrainment, validated in healthy populations, has important translational application for disciplines such as speech-language pathology where conversational entrainment represents a critical knowledge gap in the field, as well as a potential target for remediation.
Funding Sources:  View help for Funding Sources United States Department of Health and Human Services. National Institutes of Health. National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders (R21DC016084)



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V2 [2018-08-19]

V1 [2018-05-18]

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