Multimodal Expressions of Stress during a Public Speaking Task: Collection, Annotation and Global Analyses

Databases of spontaneous multimodal expressions of affective states occurring during a task are few. This paper presents a protocol for eliciting stress in a public speaking task. Behaviors of 19 participants were recorded via a multimodal setup including speech, video of the facial expressions and body movements, balance via a force plate, and physiological measures. Questionnaires were used to assert emotional states, personality profiles and relevant coping behaviors to study how participants cope with stressful situations. Several subjective and objective performances were also evaluated. Results show a significant impact of the overall task and conditions on the participants' emotional activation. The possible future use of this new multimodal emotional corpus is described.