Connectionists: Subject: [CFP] Deadline Extended for Vocal Emotion in Non-Verbal Vocalisations Competition at ACII 2022

[Alice Baird]

Dear Community,

We are delighted to announce that the first annual ACII Affective Vocal
Burst (A-VB) Workshop and Competition is now open for competition
registration and the submission deadline has been altered.

Within this first iteration of the ACII A-VB Challenge, the participants
are presented with four emotion-focused sub-challenges that utilize the
large-scale and “in-the-wild” Hume-VB dataset. The dataset and the four
tracks draw attention to new innovations in emotion science as it pertains
to vocal expression, addressing low- and high-dimensional theories of
emotional expression, cultural variation, and “call types” (laugh, cry,
sigh, etc.).

The four tasks include:

   - The High-Dimensional Emotion Task (A-VB High): The A-VB High track,
   explores a high-dimensional emotion space for understanding vocal bursts.
   Participants will be challenged with predicting the intensity of 10
   emotions (Awe, Excitement, Amusement, Awkwardness, Fear, Horror, Distress,
   Triumph, Sadness, and Surprise) associated with each vocal burst as a
   multi-output regression task. Participants will report the average
   Concordance Correlation Coefficient (CCC), as well as the Pearson
   correlation coefficient, across all 10 emotions. The baseline for this
   challenge will be based on CCC.
   - The Two-Dimensional Emotion Task (A-VB Two): In the A-VB Two track, we
   investigate a low-dimensional emotion space that is based on the circumplex
   model of affect. Participants will predict values of arousal and valence
   (on a scale from 1=unpleasant/subdued, 5=neutral, 9=pleasant/stimulated) as
   a regression task. Participants will report the average Concordance
   Correlation Coefficient (CCC), as well as the Pearson correlation
   coefficient, across the two dimensions. The baseline for this challenge
   will be based on CCC.
   - The Cross-Cultural Emotion Task (A-VB Culture): In the A-VB Culture
   track, participants will be challenged with predicting the intensity of 10
   emotions associated with each vocal burst as a multi-output regression
   task, using a model or multiple models that generate predictions specific
   to each of the four cultures  (the U.S., China, Venezuela, or South
   Africa). Specifically, annotations of each vocal burst will consist of
   culture-specific ground truth, meaning that the ground truth for each
   sample will be the average of annotations solely from the country of origin
   of the sample. Participants will report the average Concordance Correlation
   Coefficient (CCC), as well as the Pearson correlation coefficient, across
   all 10 emotions. The baseline for this challenge will be based on CCC.
   - The Expressive Burst-Type Task (A-VB Type): In the A-VB Type task,
   participants will be challenged with classifying the type of expressive
   vocal burst from 7 classes (Gasp, Laugh, Cry, Scream, Grunt, Groan, Pant,
   Other).  Participants will report the Unweighted Average Recall (UAR) as a
   measure of performance.

*The A-VB Workshop will also be accepting contributions on other related
topics:*

   -

   Detecting and Understanding Nonverbal Vocalizations
   -

   Modeling Vocal Emotional Expression
   -

   Cross-Cultural Emotional Expression Modeling
   -

   Other topics related to Auditory Affective Computing

See the following website for more information, rules, and deadlines:
www.competitions.hume.ai

*The general deadlines have been extended and are as follows:*

   - Challenge Opening (data available): May 27, 2022
   - Baselines information released: TBA.
   - Other Topics contributions deadline: July 22, 2022
   *(Included in ACII Proceedings)*
   - Notification of Acceptance: July 29, 2022
   - Camera Ready: August 15, 2022
   - *Competition deadline: September 2, 2022*
   -
*Competition Technical Report submission deadline: September 6, 2022 **(Peer
   Reviewed by A-VB technical committee, not included in ACII Proceedings)*
   - Notification of Acceptance: September 16, 2022
   - Workshop: October 18 - 21, 2022

We look forward to hearing from interested parties! Please get in touch
with competitions at hume.ai with any questions!

More information can be found on our website: competitions.hume.ai/avb2022
<https://www.competitions.hume.ai/avb2022>

Best,

A-VB Workshop & Competition organizing team
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://mailman.srv.cs.cmu.edu/pipermail/connectionists/attachments/20220628/177dbe01/attachment.html>
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: A-VB_CfP_v07.pdf
Type: application/pdf
Size: 184938 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <http://mailman.srv.cs.cmu.edu/pipermail/connectionists/attachments/20220628/177dbe01/attachment.pdf>