Conversation behavior assessment to estimate communication difficulty

The communication behavior of humans adapts to the needs of different communication situations. Humans have developed several strategies to successfully communicate in challenging acoustic environments. Some of these strategies can be consciously controlled while in a conversation, but others happen sub-consciously, or as a mixture of both. The applied strategies come with an increased effort, a deviation from common behavior, or the overcoming of personal comfort zones and are usually ceased as soon as the situation allows. This study’s aim is to monitor participant’s communication behavior in easy and challenging acoustic situations and use this data as a measure for the experienced communication difficulty. The Sonova Real Life Lab allows to investigate natural conversation situations in a controlled acoustic environment. Participants can move around and interact with each other across a 25m² stage, while their head positions and orientations are tracked with a motion capturing system. The voices of the participants are recorded using wireless headset microphones. This allows to estimate individual vocal effort and analyze backchanneling and turn taking behavior. This contribution will present and discuss data collected with participants engaged in real one-to-one conversations, while the acoustic background was systematically altered.