Respiratory Belts and Whistles: A Preliminary Study of Breathing Acoustics for Turn-Taking
Marcin Włodarczak, Mattias Heldner · 2016
This paper presents first results on using acoustic intensity of inhalations as a cue to speech initiation in spontaneous multiparty conversations. We demonstrate that inhalation intensity significantly differentiates between cycles coinciding with no speech activity, shorter (< 1 s) and longer stretches of speech. While the model fit is relatively weak, it is comparable to the fit of a model using kinematic features collected with Respiratory Inductance Plethysmography. We also show that incorpo- rating both kinematic and acoustic features further improves the model. Given the ease of capturing breath acoustics, we consider the results to be a promising first step towards studying communicative functions of respiratory sounds. We discuss possible extensions to the data collection procedure with a view to improving predictive power of the model.