Discovering and documenting brilliance

A novel multimodal annotation method

Abstract

The pursuit of understanding human brilliance has long fascinated scholars, practitioners, and observers across various domains of performance. Capturing and understanding human brilliance is an important endeavor, as it allows us to gain insight into the motivations behind extraordinary achievements. However, brilliance remains a complex phenomenon that eludes simple characterization. In this paper we propose a methodology for investigating brilliance. We use structured interviews with high-achieving individuals to document the language surrounding their accomplishments, and code this language using seven distinct themes. Each interview is then annotated using a multimodal annotation schema that captures a variety of linguistic and paralinguistic features, including phonetic information, hand gesture, and eye gaze. This system allows us to discover and document the tacit knowledge that underlies human brilliance and make inroads in understanding the full communicative expression of brilliance.