Finding Social Information in a Conversation: A New Frontier in Speech Research

When you hear people speaking in a foreign language, what tells you if they're arguing? What clues help us understand who is leading a meeting and when to pay attention? As humans, we can tell a lot about what's going on at a personal and social level between people who are talking.

But what are we paying attention to? In this podcast, Kristin Precoda, director of SRI's Speech Technology and Research (STAR) Lab, shares insight on this new area of research and its potential use as a tool to improve teaching, remote collaboration, and virtual assistants.