The Listening Talker: an interdisciplinary workshop on natural and
synthetic modification of speech in response to listening conditions

Edinburgh, 2-3 May 2012

http://listening-talker.org/workshop

When talkers speak, they also listen. Talkers routinely adapt to their
interlocutors and environment, maintaining intelligibility and
dialogue fluidity in a way that promotes efficient exchange of
information. In contrast, current speech output technology is largely
deaf, incapable of adapting to the listener's context, inefficient in
use and lacking the naturalness that comes from rapid appreciation of
the speaker-listener environment.  A key scientific challenge is to
better understand how 'talker-listeners' respond to context and to
apply these findings to the modification of natural (live/recorded)
and generated (synthetic) speech. The ISCA-supported Listening Talker
(LISTA) workshop brings together linguists, psychologists,
neuroscientists, engineers and others working on human and machine
speech perception and production, to explore new approaches to
context-sensitive speech generation.

The workshop will be single-track, with invited talks and contributed
oral and poster presentations. An open call for a special issue of
Computer Speech and Language on the theme of the listening talker will
follow the workshop.

Contributions are invited on any aspect of the listening talker,
including but not limited to:

- theories and models of human communication involving the listening talker
- human speech production modifications induced by noise
- speech production changes with manipulated feedback
- algorithms/vocoders for speech modification
- transformations from casual to clear speech
- characterisation of the listening context
- intelligibility and quality metrics for modified speech
- application to natural dialogues, PA, teleconferencing

Invited speakers

 Torsten Dau  (Danish Technical University)
 Valerie Hazan  (University College, London)
 Richard Heusdens  (Technical University Delft)
 Hideki Kawahara  (Wakayama University)
 Roger Moore  (University of Sheffield)
 Martin Pickering  (University of Edinburgh)
 Peter Vary  (Aachen University)
 Junichi Yamagishi  (University of Edinburgh)

Important dates

 30th January 2012: Submission of 4-page papers
 27th February 2012: Notification of acceptance/rejection

Co-chairs

 Martin Cooke  (University of the Basque Country)
 Simon King  (University of Edinburgh)
 Bastiaan Kleijn  (Victoria University of Wellington)
 Yannis Stylianou  (University of Crete)