Is Distance a Modality? Multi-Label Learning for Speech-Based Joint Prediction of Attributed Traits and Perceived Distances in 3D Audio Immersive Environments
Eva Fringi, Nesreen Alshubaily, Lorenzo Picinali, Stephen Anthony Brewster, Tanaya Guha, Alessandro Vinciarelli · 2024
To the best of our knowledge, this article presents the first experiments on speech-based Automatic Personality Perception performed in a virtual immersive audio environment. The key-difference compared to all previous works in the literature is that, in a virtual immersive environment, people perceive not only the voice of the speakers, but also their position and distance in space. Therefore, it is possible to investigate for the first time whether people tend to attribute different traits to people speaking at different distances and, if so, whether this makes a difference in terms of Automatic Personality Perception. The experiments were performed over 360 recordings rendered at different distances (120 speakers including 60 female and 60 male). The results show that there are correlations between perceived distance and personality judgments. Furthermore, the experiments show that the performance in Automatic Personality Perception improves when taking perceived distance into account. These results are important because immersive environments are likely to become one of the main technological interfaces through which people interact with one another and with machines.