Non-verbal Communication in Dialogue: Alignment between Eyebrow Raises and Pitch Accents in English

When we engage in conversation, we use both verbal and non-verbal communication, including facial expressions. The latter have been investigated mainly in relation to the expression of emotion, but research into their connection with speech is still scarce. This is surprising, considering its relevance for psycholinguistic theories of speech production and for the development of multimodal communication systems. Some studies have associated eyebrow raising with intonation, but there is no strong empirical support. A few exceptions include studies with synthetic animations in Dutch that have reported a preference for short eyebrow raises to be aligned with pitch accents (Krahmer and Swerts, 2004). The purpose of the current study was to investigate eyebrow raising in dialogue to test the hypothesis that brow raises are aligned with pitch accents in English. Since pitch accents have roles in discourse, if such alignment exists brow raises may contribute to these linguistic roles.