Affect burst recognition using multi-modal cues

Affect bursts, which are nonverbal expressions of emotions in conversations, play a critical role in analyzing affective states. Although there exist a number of methods on affect burst detection and recognition using only audio information, little effort has been spent for combining cues in a multi-modal setup. We suggest that facial gestures constitute a key component to characterize affect bursts, and hence have potential for more robust affect burst detection and recognition. We take a data-driven approach to characterize affect bursts using Hidden Markov Models (HMM), and employ a multimodal decision fusion scheme that combines cues from audio and facial gestures for classification of affect bursts. We demonstrate the contribution of facial gestures to affect burst recognition by conducting experiments on an audiovisual database which comprise speech and facial motion data belonging to various dyadic conversations.