Cross-Modal Analysis of Speech, Gestures, Gaze and Facial Expressions: COST Action 2102 International Conference, Prague, Czech Republic, October 15-1

This volume brings together the peer-reviewed contributions of the participants at the COST 2102 International Conference on “Cross-Modal Analysis of Speech, Gestures, Gaze and Facial Expressions” held in Prague, Czech Republic, October 15–18, 2008. The conference was sponsored by COST (European Cooperation in the Field of Scientific and Technical Research, www. cost. esf. org/domains_actions/ict) in the - main of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) for disseminating the research advances developed within COST Action 2102: “Cross-Modal Analysis of Verbal and Nonverbal Communication” http://cost2102. cs. stir. ac. uk. COST 2102 research networking has contributed to modifying the conventional theoretical approach to the cross-modal analysis of verbal and nonverbal communi- tion changing the concept of face to face communication with that of body to body communication as well as developing the idea of embodied information. Information is no longer the result of a difference in perception and is no longer measured in terms of quantity of stimuli, since the research developed in COST 2102 has proved that human information processing is a nonlinear process that cannot be seen as the sum of the numerous pieces of information available. Considering simply the pieces of inf- mation available, results in a model of the receiver as a mere decoder, and produces a huge simplification of the communication process.

This book constitutes the peer-reviewed post-conference proceedings of the Second COST Action 2102 International Conference on Cross-Modal Analysis of Speech, Gestures,Gaze and Facial Expressions held in Prague, Czech Republic during October 15-18, 2008.

The 39 peer-reviewed papers presented are organized in three sections. The first section “Emotion and ICT,” deals with themes related to the crossfertilization between studies on ICT practices of use and cross-modal analysis of verbal and nonverbal communication. The second section, “Verbal and Nonverbal Features of Computational Phonetics,” presents original studies devoted to the modelling of verbal and nonverbal phonetics. The third section, “Algorithmic and Theoretical Analysis of Multimodal Interfaces,” presents theoretical and practical implementations of original studies devoted to the analysis of speech, gestures, face and head movements as well as to learning issues in human–computer interaction and to algorithmic solutions for noise environments in human–machine exchanges.