Evaluating recurrence as a measure of change in interpersonal dynamics (2015-2018)

This project will develop an automated conversation analysis system to quantify how communication changes over extended periods of time. It is innovative in extending the theory and methods of recurrence analysis (a dynamical systems technique) to interacting modalities combining text, audio and video, and to longitudinal analyses. The project is significant in being the first to measure communication dynamics over time in the fields of education, health, public discourse and science. It will result in new theories and methods for recurrence analysis validated using real-world data; and will enable new technologies for evaluating professional communication training and communication changes resulting from education or disease progression.