CS6998: Topics in Speech Processing: Computational Approaches to Emotional Speech, Fall 2009

Time: Mon 4:10-6:00
Place: Eng.Terr. 253

Professor Julia Hirschberg (Office Hours: Th 4-6)
julia@cs.columbia.edu, 212-939-7114

Teaching Assistant Bob Coyne (Office Hours TBA)

Announcements | Academic Integrity | Description
Readings | Resources | Requirements | Syllabus

Description

This course introduces students to research on emotional speech and its applications in call centers, tutoring systems, and medical diagnosis. We will explore state-of-the-art work on recognizing and producing classic emotions automatically. Emotions such as anger, happiness, sadness, and uncertainty are important to recognize in online dialogue systems and to produce in computer games. We will also study the recognition of other types of speaker state, including deceptive and charismatic speech, and the uses of acoustic and prosodic information in medical domains, for the diagnosis of mental and physical conditions. Classes will be lecture and discussion with an emphasis on group participation. There are no prerequisites for the course and no exams.

Requirements

Students will lead one class discussion, and prepare weekly discussion questions based on assigned readings, and prepare a term project. The Columbia Speech Lab is available for use in homeworks on a signup basis.

All students are required to have a Computer Science Account for this class. To sign up for one, go to the CRF website and then click on "Apply for an Account".

Grading

Academic Integrity

Copying or paraphrasing someone's work (code included), or permitting your own work to be copied or paraphrased, even if only in part, is not allowed, and will result in an automatic grade of 0 for the entire assignment or exam in which the copying or paraphrasing was done. Your grade should reflect your own work. If you believe you are going to have trouble completing an assignment, please talk to the instructor or TA in advance of the due date.

Readings

Required readings will be available on line.

Announcements

Resources

• Praat - Praat resources
• Wavesurfer
• Help using ToBI - ToBI Annotation Environments
• Whissel's Dictionary of Affect
• Feeltrace download
• FACS facial coding system
• Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count (LIWC)
• Synface demo
• Draft Standard for Emotional Speech Markup Language
• Mary Emotional TTS
  

Syllabus

Julia Hirschberg
Professor, Computer Science

Columbia University
Department of Computer Science
1214 Amsterdam Avenue
M/C 0401
450 CS Building
New York, NY 10027

email: julia@cs.columbia.edu
phone: (212) 939-7114

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