Temporal Preparation for Speaking in Question-Answer Sequences.

Jan P De Ruiter,Lilla Magyari,Stephen C Levinson

doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2017.00211

Abstract

In every-day conversations, the gap between turns of conversational partners is most frequently between 0 and 200 ms. We were interested how speakers achieve such fast transitions. We designed an experiment in which participants listened to pre-recorded questions about images presented on a screen and were asked to answer these questions. We tested whether speakers already prepare their answers while they listen to questions and whether they can prepare for the time of articulation by anticipating when questions end. In the experiment, it was possible to guess the answer at the beginning of the questions in half of the experimental trials. We also manipulated whether it was possible to predict the length of the last word of the questions. The results suggest when listeners know the answer early they start speech production already during the questions. Speakers can also time when to speak by predicting the duration of turns. These temporal predictions can be based on the length of anticipated words and on the overall probability of turn durations.

Highlights

There has been increasing interest in interactive language processing in psycholinguistics (e.g., Barr, 2008; Branigan et al, 2010; Willems et al, 2010; Bašnáková et al, 2015; Garrod and Pickering, 2015; Levinson and Torreira, 2015)
One participant’s data was excluded from the statistical analysis because of remarkably different responses compared to all other subjects
Fixed effects were whether participants could know the answer early or late (ANSWER), whether the competitor of the final word was the similar or different in length

Summary

Introduction

There has been increasing interest in interactive language processing in psycholinguistics (e.g., Barr, 2008; Branigan et al, 2010; Willems et al, 2010; Bašnáková et al, 2015; Garrod and Pickering, 2015; Levinson and Torreira, 2015). Experimental studies of language processing have focused mainly on how individuals comprehend or produce phonemes, words and sentences, while the social setting in which language is used has rarely been investigated. If we want to study human language capacity an important issue is how an interactional context influences language processing. A systematic way of turn-taking appears early during human development and it precedes the development of linguistic competence. It has been suggested that turn-taking appeared prior to language in phylogeny (Levinson, 2016). During conversational turn-taking, speakers and listeners alternate freely, without the restrictions of any institutional settings (e.g., interactions between teacher and student or between doctor and patient; Levinson, 1983). Observations have shown that turn-transitions of natural conversations –the switches between the speaker’s and the listener’s roles– happen remarkably quickly. Experimental studies have estimated how long the process leading to the initiation

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Discussion

Conclusion