The Temporal Structure of Multimodal Communication : Theory, Methods and Applications

The general focus of this book is on multimodal communication, which captures the temporal patterns of behavior in various dialogue settings. After an overview of current theoretical models of verbal and nonverbal communication cues, it presents studies on a range of related topics: paraverbal behavior patterns in the classroom setting; a proposed optimal methodology for conversational analysis; a study of time and mood at work; an experiment on the dynamics of multimodal interaction from the observer’s perspective; formal cues of uncertainty in conversation; how machines can know we understand them; and detecting topic changes using neural network techniques. A joint work bringing together psychologists, communication scientists, information scientists and linguists, the book will be of interest to those working on a wide range of applications from industry to home, and from health to security, with the main goals of revealing, embedding and implementing a rich spectrum of information on human behavior.