Acoustic and Facial Markers of Perceived Conversational Success in Spontaneous Speech

TL;DR

This study investigates how multimodal conversational features in spontaneous Zoom dialogues relate to perceived success, revealing entrainment as a key marker of engaging communication.

Contribution

It introduces a comprehensive analysis of multimodal features in naturalistic conversations and links entrainment to perceived conversational success.

Findings

Entrainment correlates with higher perceived interaction quality.

Multimodal features like turn-taking, facial movements, and acoustic measures predict success.

Spontaneous speech entrainment is reliably detected and associated with engagement.

Abstract

Individuals often align their speaking patterns with their interlocutors, a phenomenon linked to engagement and rapport. While well documented in task-oriented dialogues, less is known about entrainment in naturalistic, non-task and virtual settings. In this study, we analyze a large corpus of spontaneous dyadic Zoom conversations to examine how conversational dynamics relate to perceived interaction quality. We extract multimodal features encompassing turn-taking, pauses, facial movements, and acoustic measures such as pitch and intensity. Perceived conversational success was quantified via factor analysis of post-conversation ratings. Results demonstrate that entrainment reliably detected in spontaneous speech and correlates with higher perceived success. These findings identify key interactional markers of conversational quality and highlight opportunities for targeted interventions to foster more effective and engaging communication.