Evaluating deep learning architectures for Speech Emotion Recognition.

Journal: Neural networks : the official journal of the International Neural Network Society
Published Date:

Abstract

Speech Emotion Recognition (SER) can be regarded as a static or dynamic classification problem, which makes SER an excellent test bed for investigating and comparing various deep learning architectures. We describe a frame-based formulation to SER that relies on minimal speech processing and end-to-end deep learning to model intra-utterance dynamics. We use the proposed SER system to empirically explore feed-forward and recurrent neural network architectures and their variants. Experiments conducted illuminate the advantages and limitations of these architectures in paralinguistic speech recognition and emotion recognition in particular. As a result of our exploration, we report state-of-the-art results on the IEMOCAP database for speaker-independent SER and present quantitative and qualitative assessments of the models' performances.

Authors

  • Haytham M Fayek
    School of Engineering, RMIT University, Melbourne VIC 3001, Australia. Electronic address: haytham.fayek@ieee.org.
  • Margaret Lech
    School of Engineering, RMIT University, Melbourne VIC 3001, Australia. Electronic address: margaret.lech@rmit.edu.au.
  • Lawrence Cavedon
    School of Science, RMIT University, Melbourne, Australia.