Patent ID: 6941269

Claim:
A voice processing system, comprising: a processing device for digitizing a voice stream input from a user; a first storage device for storing said digitized voice stream input from said user; a predetermined backchannel response held in a second storage device, wherein the predetermined backchannel reponse is produced by a speech synthesis mechanism and is stored in a digitally encoded file; and a software program, cooperating with the processing device, for identifying a temporal pattern of speech and non-speech time intervals of said voice stream input so as to generate the predetermined backchannel response to the user, wherein said predetermined backchannel response is output if the identified temporal pattern of speech and non-speech time intervals of said voice stream input matches a predetermined temporal pattern of speech and non-speech time intervals, said predetermined temporal pattern of speech and non-speech time intervals comprising at least one time period of speech of a first predetermined length intermixed with at least one time period of non-speech of a second predetermined length in a predetermined pattern.