A Methodology for Reader´s Emotional State Extraction to Augment Expressions in Speech Synthesis

This paper presents a methodology for the real-time extraction of readers´ emotional state from documents as well as the representation of emotionally annotated documents into acoustic modality. Using the Self Assessment Manikin Test we performed preliminary experiments on the extraction of Pleasure - Arousal - Dominance (P.A.D.) annotation rules that the documents evoke to the readers. The rules are used in an automated procedure that assigns text´s formatting and structure of documents (meta-data) to emotional state values. During the vocalization of documents, these values, and consequently the documents´ meta-data, are carried by different expressions of speech using text-to-speech synthesis. The proposed system architecture is language independent and content-free.