PASCAL and DPA: A Pilot Study on Using Prosodic Competence Scores to Predict Communicative Skills for Team Working and Public Speaking

Strong communication skills in public-speaking and teamworking exercises are associated with specific acousticprosodic profiles and strategies. We hypothesize that analyzing and assessing these profiles and strategies allows us to predict communicative skills. To that end, we used two analysis methods, one for charismatic and persuasive public speaking (PASCAL), and one for cooperative communication (DPA). PASCAL and DPA competency scores are determined on an acoustic basis for speech recordings of 21 students whose task was to co-create, in 7 teams of 3 students, a fully functioning weather station over 14 weeks in an Electrical Engineering project course and to jointly write a development report about it afterwards. Results show that the students' PASCAL scores are significantly correlated with both the grade in their final oral project presentation and the grade of their written report as assessed by an independent lecturer group. The DPA scores correlate with better time-management and team working as well as with the quality and functionality of the designed product. Explanations for the links between student performance and acoustic competence scores are discussed.