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Main Authors: Wallbridge, Sarenne, Bell, Peter, Lai, Catherine
Format: Preprint
Published: 2023
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Online Access:https://arxiv.org/abs/2307.03534
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author Wallbridge, Sarenne
Bell, Peter
Lai, Catherine
author_facet Wallbridge, Sarenne
Bell, Peter
Lai, Catherine
contents Speech is a fundamental means of communication that can be seen to provide two channels for transmitting information: the lexical channel of which words are said, and the non-lexical channel of how they are spoken. Both channels shape listener expectations of upcoming communication; however, directly quantifying their relative effect on expectations is challenging. Previous attempts require spoken variations of lexically-equivalent dialogue turns or conspicuous acoustic manipulations. This paper introduces a generalised paradigm to study the value of non-lexical information in dialogue across unconstrained lexical content. By quantifying the perceptual value of the non-lexical channel with both accuracy and entropy reduction, we show that non-lexical information produces a consistent effect on expectations of upcoming dialogue: even when it leads to poorer discriminative turn judgements than lexical content alone, it yields higher consensus among participants.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2307_03534
institution arXiv
publishDate 2023
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Quantifying the perceptual value of lexical and non-lexical channels in speech
Wallbridge, Sarenne
Bell, Peter
Lai, Catherine
Computation and Language
Information Theory
Speech is a fundamental means of communication that can be seen to provide two channels for transmitting information: the lexical channel of which words are said, and the non-lexical channel of how they are spoken. Both channels shape listener expectations of upcoming communication; however, directly quantifying their relative effect on expectations is challenging. Previous attempts require spoken variations of lexically-equivalent dialogue turns or conspicuous acoustic manipulations. This paper introduces a generalised paradigm to study the value of non-lexical information in dialogue across unconstrained lexical content. By quantifying the perceptual value of the non-lexical channel with both accuracy and entropy reduction, we show that non-lexical information produces a consistent effect on expectations of upcoming dialogue: even when it leads to poorer discriminative turn judgements than lexical content alone, it yields higher consensus among participants.
title Quantifying the perceptual value of lexical and non-lexical channels in speech
topic Computation and Language
Information Theory
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2307.03534