In this paper, we adopt a direct modeling approach to utilize conversational gesture cues in detecting sentence boundaries, called SUs, in video taped conversations. We treat the detection of SUs as a classification task such that for each inter-word boundary, the classifier decides whether there is an SU boundary or not. In addition to gesture cues, we also utilize prosody and lexical knowledge sources. In this first investigation, we find that gesture features complement the prosodic and lexical knowledge sources for this task. By using all of the knowledge sources, the model is able to achieve the lowest overall SU detection error rate. Categories and Subject Descriptors: H.5.1 [Multimedia Information Systems] Audio and Video Input, H.5.5 [Sound and Music Computing] Modeling and Signal Analysis, I.2.7 [Natural Language Processing] Dialog Processing General Terms: Algorithms, Performance, Experimentation, Languages.
Mary P. Harper, Elizabeth Shriberg