I had a fabulous time attending UK Speech 2023 from June 14-15, 2023, at the University of Sheffield in the UK, and presenting some ongoing work exploring prosody in referential communication with human and computer partners.
Particularly happy that the conference will be renamed UK and Ireland Speech starting next year to reflect the contributions of Irish researchers to the speech technology community in the British Isles. 💚 🇮🇪
This month, I joined the ADAPT Gender, Equality, Diversity and Inclusion (GEDI) Committee as a postdoctoral representative.
In parallel with ADAPT’s research mission, the GEDI Committee advises the centre on issues relating to inclusiveness, diversity and equal opportunities for all members. It works with the ADAPT management to create an open, sustainable, and community-focused culture that fosters next generation research.
We are happy to announce that our article Audience Design and Egocentrism in Reference Production during Human-Computer Dialogue was published in the International Journal of Human-Computer Studies and is available online. 📖
The article compares the level of allocentric and egocentric speech production in human-human dialogue (HHD) and human-computer dialogue (HCD). We find that the role the computer partner occupies in the dialogue (i.e., whether it is seen more as a tool or as a dialogue partner) can affect how allocentric and egocentric users behave during the interaction. A more tool-like perception of the computer partner leads to increased egocentric behaviour on the part of the user, while perceiving the computer partner as dialogue partner leads to similar levels of allocentric and egocentric behaviour in HCD as in HHD.
Happy to have been featured in ADAPT’s Innovating Women Campaign – see here. #EmbraceEquity ✊
In this context: 🚨 We are calling female-identifying Bachelor’s and Master’s students working in speech science and technology to participate in this year’s Young Female Researchers in Speech Workshop. Submit a 300 word abstract about a project you are involved in until May 6th, 2023 – and come to Dublin this August! We are looking forward to having you here! 👀
Today I had the pleasure of visiting Hyro Tel Aviv. With members of the product and engineering teams we discussed speech-related phenomena and their relevance for conversational AI. Thank you for having me (Eran Raveh, Rotem Fisch et al)! 😊 👋