In Tune With In-Poco? A New Device for Analyzing and Training the Interplay of Body Posture and Charismatic Speech Prosody

Authors: Tobias Blaabjerg Karlsen, Karl Jhon Decuzar De Castro, Emils Pipars, Iyad Ahed Abdelrahman Abdel Qader, Jose Dumitru Ilinca Sainz, Simas Srugys, Oliver Niebuhr

Abstract:

Our paper introduces a new technology for posture research and training: the INteractive POsture COrrector, IN-POCO. The device warns its users about unfavorable postures when speaking (e.g., sitting in video conferences) and is thus suitable as an aid for rhetoric trainers. In addition, IN-POCO can also collect time-aligned posture and speech signals for researching prosody-posture relationships in the speech sciences. We outline the motivation for the development of IN-POCO and describe the key technical specifications and operational characteristics. The paper concludes with a pilot experiment in which we provide initial evidence that, for a communicative (public) speaking task, posture does indeed affect speech prosody in gender-specific ways – in line with claims of rhetoric trainers and guidebooks, and such that an unfavorable (e.g,, humped) posture can be assumed to reduce the speaker's vocal charisma.