Non-verbal vocalisations in human-human and human-machine interactions play important roles in displaying social and affective behaviours and in managing the flow of interaction. Laughter, sighs, clicks, filled pauses, and short utterances such as feedback responses are among some of the non-verbal vocalisations that are being increasingly studied from various research fields. However, much is still unknown about the phonetic or visual characteristics of non-verbal vocalisations (production/encoding), their relations to the social actions they are part of, their perceived meanings (perception/decoding), and their ordering in interaction. Furthermore, with the increased interest for more naturalness in human-machine interaction, current times also invite exploring how these phenomena can be integrated in speech applications.
The workshop would be in its 7th edition, with previous editions held in Saarbrücken (2007), Berlin (2009), Dublin (2012), Enschede (2015), Paris (2018), and Bielefeld (2020). The goal of this series of workshops is to bring together scientists from diverse research areas and to provide an exchange forum for interdisciplinary discussions in order to gain a better understanding of laughter and other non-verbal vocalisations.
Research themes include, but are not restricted to, these aspects of laughter and other non-verbal vocalisations:
- Articulation, acoustics, and perception
- Interaction and pragmatics
- Affective and evaluative meanings
- Social perception and organisation
- Disfluency
- Technology applications
Researchers are invited to submit extended abstracts (2 pages of content and maximum one additional page for references and figures) describing original work, including work in progress.
There will be two keynote presentations on the topics treated by the workshop, delivered by Prof. Carolyn McGettigan (University College London, UK) and Prof. Margaret Zellers (Kiel University, Germany).
Important Dates
- Submission deadline: 21 March
- Acceptance notification: 18 April
- Final paper submission: 15 May
- Workshop registration deadline: 01 June
Submission Procedure
All submissions should use the Interspeech 2023 template, but limited to 2 pages of content (and maximum one additional page for references and figures) and should be submitted in pdf format through the CMT platform: https://cmt3.research.microsoft.com/LW2024/Submission/Index.
Each submission will be reviewed by at least two reviewers. Accepted papers will be made available online, through the ISCA Archive.
Organisation
- Bogdan Ludusan (Bielefeld University)
- Marina Cantarutti (University of York)
The workshop will take place on 16 and 17 July.
Information and Agenda
See pre-conference website here
For further information or questions regarding the workshop you can contact the organizers at the following email address: LaughterWorkshop2024@gmail.com
The workshop will be supported by the International Speech Communication Association (ISCA), offering one travel grant for early career scientists. Authors of accepted papers who are eligible for this award should apply for it through the ISCA platform.