Contribution
Head orientation in Multi-Conversation Settings
* Presenting author
Abstract:
Head orientation during conversations has mainly been studied in small conversation groups with a fixed number of speakers, leaving it unclear how head movements and orientation towards conversation partners vary in different communication contexts. To investigate this, we recorded egocentric video from 48 young subjects in multi-conversation experiments. In each session, 6-10 individuals were asked to engage in conversations within 1-5 subgroups. Per individual, we recorded 20 five-minute conversations in different subgroups of 2-10 people at a time, resulting in 69 hours of egocentric video. The design contrasted simple communication scenarios with complex, spatially overlapping conversation groups. We employed state-of-the-art face recognition algorithms to detect conversation partners in the egocentric video.Our results indicate that head orientation varies systematically with group size. Analyzing the spatial distribution of conversation partners’ faces in the visual field of view (FOV), we found that, in larger groups, partners were distributed across the FOV. This challenges the assumption that conversation partners are generally positioned directly in front of the listener, which may only be valid in relatively simple communication situations. These insights may guide spatial beamforming in hearing aids and inform the development of intelligent hearing devices that leverage video data to steer acoustic processing.