Evaluation of the entrainment between a speaker's burst-pause of speech and respiration and a listener's respiration in face-to-face communication

Entrainment which forms the biological relation between talkers plays an important role in the smooth exchange of information. In this paper, the physiological entrainment of respiration between talkers is evaluated on the basis of burst-pause of speech, respiration and heart beat-to-beat interval as indices from the viewpoint that the respiratory entrainment would be a physiological main factor to make communication smooth in face-to-face interaction. By using the proposed physiological measurements of communication, the experiment is performed in adult face-to-face versus non-face-to-face communication. The existence of respiratory entrainment in face-to-face communication is demonstrated by the cross-correlation analysis of the indices. This finding suggests the entrainment is biologically essential to human communication and it can be applied to the human interface for the design and evaluation of face-to-face interaction support systems such as a teleconference system.