Author(s): Barros, Fábio ; Conde, Ângelo ; Soares, Sandra C. ; Neves, António J. R. ; Silva, Samuel
Date: 2020
Persistent ID: http://hdl.handle.net/10773/33103
Origin: RIA - Repositório Institucional da Universidade de Aveiro
Subject(s): Verbal and non-verbal communication; Computational methods; Posture; Facial expressions; Voice
Communication is part of our everyday life and our ability to communicate can have a significant role in a variety of contexts in our personal, academic, and professional lives. For long, the characterization of what is a good communicator has been subject to research and debate by several areas, particularly in Education, with a focus on improving the performance of teachers. In this context, the literature suggests that the ability to communicate is not only defined by the verbal component, but also by a plethora of non-verbal contributions providing redundant or complementary information, and, sometimes, being the message itself. However, even though we can recognize a good or bad communicator, objectively, little is known about what aspects – and to what extent—define the quality of a presentation. The goal of this work is to create the grounds to support the study of the defining characteristics of a good communicator in a more systematic and objective form. To this end, we conceptualize and provide a first prototype for a computational approach to characterize the different elements that are involved in communication, from audiovisual data, illustrating the outcomes and applicability of the proposed methods on a video database of public speakers.
