Conversational Turn-taking Research Articles

Vocal reaction times to speech offsets: Implications for processing models of conversational turn-taking

Everyday conversation is characterized by a rapid alternation of turns among successive speakers. We investigate vocal reaction times to speech offsets in order to shed light on the limits of reactive behavior in conversational turn-taking. Twenty-three speakers of Dutch produced a prepared response ([ja], ‘yes’) as fast as possible in response to (a) the onset of a pure tone preceded by a variable amount of silence, and (b) the offset of several types of speech-like auditory stimuli varying in duration, prosodic characteristics, and speech rate. Reactions to the offset of stimuli lacking final prosodic cues were significantly longer than reactions to stimulus onsets (283 vs. 215 ms on average), and were rare below 200 ms (3%). Speaking latencies decreased as prosodic cues appeared further away from the stimulus end. Slowing down the speech rate produced an entrainment effect (i.e. slower responses) for stimuli lacking prosodic cues vs. a facilitatory effect (i.e. faster responses) when prosodic cues were present. These findings suggest that smooth turn transitions taking less than 200 ms are unlikely to involve reactions to silence at the end of a turn, but that they can be achieved when turn-final prosodic cues are available.

Turn-taking in conversation uttered by Madurese community in Jember

Turn-taking in conversation is unique in the Madurese ethnic culture. This study aims to describe the turn-taking in conversation that applies to the Madurese community in Jember. To achieve this goal, a qualitative approach was used. Data were obtained through participatory observation with record and note techniques, then analyzed descriptive qualitative. The results showed that there were at least two speech shift patterns demonstrated by the Madurese community in Jember, namely, informal verbal communication and formal verbal communication. In informal verbal communication, two patterns were found, namely: (1) overlapping turn-taking in conversation patterns, and (2) turn-taking in conversation patterns without overlapping speech. In formal communication, the turn-taking pattern is always shown without overlapping speech. Interrupting people's speech in situations of formal verbal communication is considered to violate prevailing rules and is subject to negative stigma from society. The results of this study will have implications for the implementation of the use of honorifics in communication in Tapal Kuda area involving speech participants from different social statuses, roles, positions, and ages.

Acquisition of turn-taking in sign language conversations: An overview of language modality and turn structure.

The task of transitioning from one interlocutor to another in conversation – taking turns – is a complex social process, but typically transpires rapidly and without incident in conversations between adults. Cross-linguistic similarities in turn timing and turn structure have led researchers to suggest that it is a core antecedent to human language and a primary driver of an innate “interaction engine.” This review focuses on studies that have tested the extent of turn timing and turn structure patterns in two areas: across language modalities and in early language development. Taken together, these two lines of research offer predictions about the development of turn-taking for children who are deaf or hard of hearing (DHH) acquiring sign languages. We introduce considerations unique to signed language development – namely the heterogenous ecologies in which signed language acquisition occurs, suggesting that more work is needed to account for the diverse circumstances of language acquisition for DHH children. We discuss differences between early sign language acquisition at home compared to later sign language acquisition at school in classroom settings, particularly in countries with national sign languages. We also compare acquisition in these settings to communities without a national sign language where DHH children acquire local sign languages. In particular, we encourage more documentation of naturalistic conversations between DHH children who sign and their caregivers, teachers, and peers. Further, we suggest that future studies should consider: visual/manual cues to turn-taking and whether they are the same or different for child or adult learners; the protracted time-course of turn-taking development in childhood, in spite of the presence of turn-taking abilities early in development; and the unique demands of language development in multi-party conversations that happen in settings like classrooms for older children versus language development at home in dyadic interactions.

Conversation Analysis: A Methodology for Diagnosing Autism

The present study examines the conversational turn-taking patterns in autist-neurotypical talk. The objective of the study is to find out the distinctive features of autist-normal conversations. This study is cross-sectional, descriptive and qualitative in its nature. Recordings are done in anautism center in Lahore for a period of ten days. It is mainly a qualitative study in its nature. Five autistic children of different ages are selected from an autism center in Lahore. The data for the study is collected through video recording of the conversations between autists and speech therapists. The sample is selected through convenient sampling and analysis is done by following the methods of conversation analysis. The results of the analysis highlight certain distinct features of autist child-therapist talk which are not observed in the normal ordinary conversation. However, there is not a total violation of the conversation rules on the part of autists. Moreover, the findings of the research show that conversational patterns in autist-normal conversation are also affected by the chronological age of the autists. Finally, the research concludes that conversation analysis can be used as a tool for the identification of autism.

Qualitative and quantitative aspects of child-directed parental talk and the relation to 2-year-old's developing vocabulary.

Although prior research has independently linked vocabulary development with toddlers' media usage, parental mental state talk (MST), and parent-child conversational turn-taking (CTT), these variables have not been investigated within the same study. In this study, we focus on associations between these variables and 2-year-old's (N=87) vocabulary. Child vocabulary and digital media use were measured through online questionnaires. We took a multimethod approach to measure parents' child-directed talk. First, we used a home sound environment recording (Language ENvironment Analysis technology) to estimate parents' talk (CTT). Second, parents narrated a picture book, the Frog story, to assess the parent's MST. There was a negative association between how much children watched video content and their vocabulary. However, parents reported that they frequently co-viewed and engaged with the child and media. The negative association first displayed between the amount of video content viewed and the child's developing vocabulary was fully mediated by the parents' qualitative and quantitative talk as measured by MST and CCT, respectively. We propose that the parent relative level of MST and CTT also occurs when parents engage with the child during media use.

Moral Characters Represented in the Students’ Turn-Taking of Conversation

In every good interaction, there is always a change of roles between the speaker and the listener. Research on turn-taking in student conversations is interesting to do because of the diversity of regional origins and languages used by the students. This results in the emergence of distinctive patterns in the conversations among students. Through the turn-taking patterns, the characters of the speech participants can be known. This study uses a qualitative approach with data in the form of speech utterances delivered by students, which provide information of their character representation. The data collection technique used is the note-taking technique. The results obtained are the characters of social care, sharing, honesty, helping, cooperative, ethical, and working together.

Cortical dynamics underlying speech planning in rapid conversational turn-taking

During conversation, silent gaps between speakers are typically 200ms or less—suggesting that speech planning often occurs while speakers listen to their partners’ turns. Though the psycholinguistic mechanisms of planning during turn-taking are well-studied, its neural underpinnings are largely unknown. Using intracranial electrocorticography in neurosurgical patient-volunteers, we delineated planning-related activity from dynamics underlying sensorimotor processes using an interactive question–answer paradigm (adapted from Bögels et al., 2015) and found that planning activity is largely restricted to a left hemisphere network centered on caudal inferior and middle frontal gyri. In a separate task, participants performed both speech and non-speech actions, and we found that this planning network is most active while planning spoken output. We then examined neural activity during unconstrained conversation and found that the identified planning circuit is active prior to participant turn onset and while participants listen to the turns of conversational partners. Finally, in preliminary direct cortical stimulation experiments, we found that perturbation of this planning network results in significantly longer reaction times and lexical errors but not gross articulatory disruptions. In conclusion, using controlled interactive language tasks, we uncovered a speech-selective cortical planning circuit that is active during natural conversation and required to execute rapid turn-taking.

Overrated gaps: Inter-speaker gaps provide limited information about the timing of turns in conversation

Corpus analyses have shown that turn-taking in conversation is much faster than laboratory studies of speech planning would predict. To explain fast turn-taking, Levinson and Torreira (2015) proposed that speakers are highly proactive: They begin to plan a response to their interlocutor's turn as soon as they have understood its gist, and launch this planned response when the turn-end is imminent. Thus, fast turn-taking is possible because speakers use the time while their partner is talking to plan their own utterance. In the present study, we asked how much time upcoming speakers actually have to plan their utterances. Following earlier psycholinguistic work, we used transcripts of spoken conversations in Dutch, German, and English. These transcripts consisted of segments, which are continuous stretches of speech by one speaker. In the psycholinguistic and phonetic literature, such segments have often been used as proxies for turns. We found that in all three corpora, large proportions of the segments comprised of only one or two words, which on our estimate does not give the next speaker enough time to fully plan a response. Further analyses showed that speakers indeed often did not respond to the immediately preceding segment of their partner, but continued an earlier segment of their own. More generally, our findings suggest that speech segments derived from transcribed corpora do not necessarily correspond to turns, and the gaps between speech segments therefore only provide limited information about the planning and timing of turns.

Recurrent Multinomial Models for Categorical Sequences

This paper presents a model of recurrent multinomial sequences. Though there exists a quite considerable literature on modeling autocorrelation in numerical data and sequences of categorical outcomes, there is currently no systematic method of modeling patterns of recurrence in categorical sequences. This paper develops a means of discovering recurrent patterns by employing a more restrictive Markov assumption. The resulting model, which I call the recurrent multinomial model, provides a parsimonious representation of recurrent sequences, enabling the investigation of recurrences on longer time scales than existing models. The utility of recurrent multinomial models is demonstrated by applying them to the case of conversational turn-taking in meetings of the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC). Analyses are effectively able to discover norms around turn-reclaiming, participation, and suppression and to evaluate how these norms vary throughout the course of the meeting.

Co-Speech Movement in Conversational Turn-Taking

This study investigates co-speech movements as a function of the conversational turn exchange type, the type of speech material at a turn exchange, and the interlocutor’s role as speaker or listener. A novel interactive protocol that mixes conversation and (non-read) nursery rhymes works to elicit many speech turns and co-speech movements within dyadic speech interaction. To evaluate a large amount of data, we use the density of co-speech movement as a quantitative measure. Results indicate that both turn exchange type and participant role are associated with variation in movement density for head and brow co-speech movement. Brow and head movement becomes denser as speakers approach overlapping speech exchanges, indicating that speakers increase their movement density as an interruptive exchange is approached. Similarly, head movement generally increases after such overlapping exchanges. Lastly, listeners display a higher rate of co-speech movement than speakers, both at speech turns and remote from them. Brow and head movements generally behave similarly across speech material types, conversational roles, and turn exchange types. On the whole, the study demonstrates that the quantitative co-speech movement density measure advanced here is useful in the study of co-speech movement and turn-taking.

Conversation Initiation of Mothers, Fathers, and Toddlers in their Natural Home Environment

In a conversational exchange, interlocutors use social cues including conversational turn-taking to communicate. There has been attention in the literature concerning how mothers, fathers, boys, and girls converse with each other, and in particular who initiates a conversation. Better understanding of conversational dynamics may deepen our understanding of social roles, speech and language development, and individual language variability. Here we use large-scale automatic analysis of 186 naturalistic daylong acoustic recordings to examine the conversational dynamics of 26 families with children about 30 months of age to better understand communication roles. Families included 15 with boys and 11 with girls. There was no difference in conversation initiation rate by child sex, but children initiated more conversations than mothers, and mothers initiated more than fathers. Results support developmental theories of the different and variable roles that interlocutors play in a social context.

Verbosity, traumatic brain injury, and conversation: A preliminary investigation

ABSTRACT Background Cognitive-communication disorders resulting from traumatic brain injury may cause speakers to produce excessive verbal output, i.e., to be verbose. There is little evidence on the specific behaviours through which speakers achieve verbosity in conversation. Specifying verbosity-related behaviours can provide an improved basis for diagnosis, treatment, and measuring change in communication over the course of recovery. Aims This study explores whether people with verbosity caused by traumatic brain injury adopt behaviours that violate the normative organisation of turn-taking in conversation. Methods & Procedures Using conversation analysis, this study examines 1 hour and 40 minutes of conversations involving two participants with cognitive communication disorders characterised by verbosity following severe traumatic brain injury. Outcomes & Results Overlapping talk, self-initiated self-repair, parenthetical inserts, and practices for turn continuation are identified as candidate signs of verbosity. There is also evidence that verbose speakers employ practices to manage topical discontinuity caused by verbosity. Conclusions Verbose behaviour involves a complex interplay between cognitive impairment, communicative activity, and the communicative environment. Clinical measures for verbosity should be developed with reference to empirical findings about typical conversation.

Symbolic play provides a fertile context for language development.

In this study, we test the hypothesis that symbolic play represents a fertile context for language acquisition because its inherent ambiguity elicits communicative behaviors that positively influence development. Infant-caregiver dyads (N=54) participated in two 20-minute play sessions six months apart (Time 1 = 18months, Time 2 = 24months). During each session, the dyads played with two sets of toys that elicited either symbolic or functional play. The sessions were transcribed and coded for several features of dyadic interaction and language; infants' linguistic proficiency was measured via parental report. The two contexts elicited different communicative and linguistic behaviors. Notably, the symbolic play condition resulted in significantly greater conversational turn-taking than functional play, and also resulted in the greater use of questions and mimetics in infant-directed speech (IDS). In contrast, caregivers used more imperative clauses in functional play. Correlational and regression analyses showed that frequent properties of symbolic play (i.e., turn-taking, yes-no questions, mimetics) were positively related to infants' language proficiency, whereas frequent features of functional play (i.e., imperatives in IDS) were negatively related. The results provide evidence supporting the hypothesis that symbolic play is a fertile context for language development, driven by the need to negotiate meaning.

Mi’kmaq / Non-Mi’kmaq Conversational Turn-Taking

Turn-taking during verbal interactions is a linguistic and cultural pattern that regulates who is to speak during a conversation and when. Conversational turn-taking includes the length of time that occurs after the speaker says something and before the person spoken to responds (Ryan & Forrest, 2019). Within the academy at this current time of 2020, diverse knowledge holders, both Indigenous and Non-Indigenous, are actively trying to share and merge knowledge epistemologies across culture and across language. Though sharing is now actively taking place much more frequently between these two groups of scholars within Canadian universities, full comprehension of what is being communicated is not always realized by both parties. This is not due to any fault on the researchers’ part, but because many times two turn-taking paradigms are being used in a conversation instead of one.

Neuroplasticity associated with changes in conversational turn-taking following a family-based intervention

Children’s early language environments are associated with linguistic, cognitive, and academic development, as well as concurrent brain structure and function. This study investigated neurodevelopmental mechanisms linking language input to development by measuring neuroplasticity associated with an intervention designed to enhance language environments of families primarily from lower socioeconomic backgrounds. Families of 52 4-to-6 year-old children were randomly assigned to a 9-week, interactive, family-based intervention or no-contact control group. Children completed pre- and post-assessments of verbal and nonverbal cognition (n = 52), structural magnetic resonance imaging (n = 45), and home auditory recordings of language exposure (n = 39). Families who completed the intervention exhibited greater increases in adult-child conversational turns, and changes in turn-taking mediated intervention effects on language and executive functioning measures. Collapsing across groups, turn-taking changes were also positively correlated with cortical thickening in left inferior frontal and supramarginal gyri, the latter of which mediated relationships between changes in turn-taking and children’s language development. This is the first study of longitudinal neuroplasticity in response to changes in children’s language environments, and findings suggest that conversational turns support language development through cortical growth in language and social processing regions. This has implications for early interventions to enhance children’s language environments to support neurocognitive development.

Physiological Reactions in the Therapist and Turn-Taking during Online Psychotherapy with Children and Adolescents with Autism Spectrum Disorder.

This study aims to analyze the relationship between the sociocognitive skills of a group of children and adolescents with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) at verbal level 1, the variability of the therapist’s heart rate (HRV), and the conversational turn-taking during online psychotherapy sessions. Initially, we assessed the intelligence, narrative, and behavioral characteristics of the participants. We videotaped the online sessions and recorded the therapist’s HRV via a smart wireless sensor. Finally, we analyzed the video sessions using an observation system and the therapist’s HRV using the Poincaré technique. The results show that the patients’ communicative intention was related to their narrative, intellectual and social competencies. Furthermore, the turn-taking between the therapist and the participant was associated with the patient’s emotional and behavioral difficulties. On the other side, the therapist’s heart rate variability (HRV) was related to the synchrony between the therapist and the participant with more significant stress on the therapist, when he shared and expanded the conversation with the patient, and when the patient broadened and shared the conversation with the therapist.

Assessing parent-child interaction in infant deafness.

To highlight the importance of parent-child interaction (PCI) in infant deafness and address the lack of robust assessment tools in clinical practice. Most deaf babies are born to hearing parents with little experience in deafness. Deafness can reduce access to spoken language. Despite advancements in amplification technology, deaf children still present with delays in attention and communication skills at the start of nursery. Research reports that hearing parents of deaf infants can be more directive during interaction, spend less time following the child's focus of attention, and have more difficulty achieving successful turn-taking in conversation. Much research tells us that these factors impact on the quality and quantity of PCI. Good PCI, in all infants, but especially so in deafness, is a strong predictor of child language outcomes. Teachers of the Deaf and Speech and Language Therapists are the first professionals to support families in the home. For these professionals, having an objective way of assessing PCI would greatly assist and standardise their practice. However, to date, there are no deaf-specific assessments to observe and appraise a parent's communication behaviours when interacting with their deaf child. Intervention studies with families of deaf children have shown success in improving parental sensitivity and facilitative language techniques. An observational assessment in parent-deaf child interaction would ensure that communication interventions are appropriately targeted on the individual family's needs.

The gap between IQ and adaptive functioning in autism spectrum disorder: Disentangling diagnostic and sex differences.

Adaptive functioning refers to skills that are vital to success in day-to-day life, including daily living (e.g. grocery shopping, food preparation, transportation use), communication (e.g. verbal expression of needs), and socialization skills (e.g. interpersonal skills, including expressing and recognizing emotions, and understanding turn-taking in conversation). Among autistic individuals without intellectual disability, adaptive functioning is not commensurate with intellectual ability (IQ), and instead a gap exists between these individuals' intellectual ability and their adaptive skills. Further, these autistic individuals show a widening of this gap with increasing age. Existing studies of the gap between IQ and adaptive functioning have studied predominantly male samples. Thus, we do not know if the gap also exists in autistic females. We therefore looked at adaptive functioning and the gap between IQ and adaptive functioning in a large sample of autistic girls and boys without intellectual disability. To disentangle effects of group (autistic vs typically developing) from effects of sex (girls vs boys), we compared autistic girls and boys to one another as well as to their same-sex typically developing peers. Analyses took into consideration differences in IQ between autistic and typically developing youth. We found autistic girls, like autistic boys, show lower adaptive functioning than their same-sex typically developing peers. Results underscore the need to evaluate adaptive functioning in autistic individuals without intellectual disability and to provide necessary supports. The large gap between intellectual ability and socialization skills, in particular, may be of critical importance in improving our understanding of outcomes and mental health difficulties among autistic females.

The Longitudinal Relationship Between Conversational Turn-Taking and Vocabulary Growth in Early Language Development.

Children acquire language embedded within the rich social context of interaction. This paper reports on a longitudinal study investigating the developmental relationship between conversational turn-taking and vocabulary growth in English-acquiring children (N=122) followed between 9 and 24months. Daylong audio recordings obtained every 3months provided several indices of the language environment, including the number of adult words children heard in their environment and their number of conversational turns. Vocabulary was measured independently via parental report. Growth curve analyses revealed a bidirectional relationship between conversational turns and vocabulary growth, controlling for the amount of words in children's environments. The results are consistent with theoretical approaches that identify social interaction as a core component of early language acquisition.

A Technology-Assisted Language Intervention for Children Who Are Deaf or Hard of Hearing: A Randomized Clinical Trial.

Children who are deaf or hard of hearing (DHH) often have persistent language delays despite early identification and interventions. The technology-assisted language intervention (TALI), which incorporates augmentative and alternative communication technology into a speech-language therapy model, was designed to support language learning. The study objective was to evaluate the impact of the TALI on spoken language outcomes in DHH children. Children aged 3 to 12 years with mild to profound bilateral hearing loss were enrolled in a single-site randomized controlled trial. Children were randomly assigned to receive the TALI or treatment as usual (TAU) (with no change in current care) and were followed for 24 weeks. Primary outcomes included spoken language measures elicited from language samples. Secondary outcomes included standardized assessments. Intention-to-treat analyses were used. Analyses focused on 41 children randomly assigned to TALI (n = 21) or TAU (n = 20). Among all participants, mean age was 6.3 years (SD 2.5). Over 24 weeks, children in the TALI group, compared with those in the TAU group, had significantly greater increases in the length of phrases they used to express themselves (β = .91 vs .15, respectively; P< .0001). Similar findings were seen with conversational turn-taking and number of different words spoken. Providing visual supports for language concepts that are typically challenging for DHH children to acquire allowed children to process and comprehend spoken language more fully. Such strategies can mitigate persistent language delays with the goal of improving lifelong outcomes and independence across settings.