Speech emotion classification using multiple kernel Gaussian process

Abstract

Given the increasing attention paid to speech emotion classification in recent years, this work presents a novel speech emotion classification approach based on the multiple kernel Gaussian process. Two major aspects of a classification problem that play an important role in classification accuracy are addressed, i.e. feature extraction and classification. Prosodic features and other features widely used in sound effect classification are selected. A semi-nonnegative matrix factorization algorithm is then applied to the proposed features in order to obtain more information about the features. Following feature extraction, a multiple kernel Gaussian process (GP) is used for classification, in which two similarity notions from our data in the learning algorithm are presented by combining the linear kernel and radial basis function (RBF) kernel. According to our results, the proposed speech emotion classification apporach achieve an accuracy of 77.74%. Moreover, comparing different apporaches reveals that the proposed system performs best than other apporaches.