Conversational Turns Research Articles

The impact of a community-based music program during infancy onthe quality of parent-child language interactions.

The early language environment, especially high-quality, contingent parent-child language interactions, is crucial for a child's language development and later academic success. In this secondary analysis study, 89 parent-child dyads were randomly assigned to either the Music Together® (music) or play date (control) classes. Children were 9- to 15-month old at baseline, primarily white (86.7%) and female (52%). Measures of conversational turns (CTs) and parental verbal quality were coded from parent-child free play episodes at baseline, mid-intervention (month 6), and post-intervention (month 12). Results show that participants in the music group had a significantly greater increase in CT measures and quality of parent verbalization post-intervention. Music enrichment programs may be a strategy to enhance parent-child language interactions during early childhood.

A Randomized Controlled Trial of a Neonatal Intensive Care Unit Language Intervention for Parents of Preterm Infants and 2-Year Language Outcomes

To test whether a neonatal intensive care unit-based language curriculum for families with preterm infants enhances the language environment and postdischarge Bayley Scales of Infant and Toddler Development (BSID)-III language and cognitive scores. A randomized controlled trial was conducted with infants born at ≤32 weeks assigned to a parent-driven language intervention or health-safety lessons (controls). Recordings of adult word counts (AWC), conversational turns, and child vocalizations were captured at 32, 34, and 36weeks. Primary outcomes included 2-year BSID-III language and cognitive scores. We randomized 95 infants; 45 of the 48 intervention patients (94%) and 43 of the 47 controls (91%) with ≥2 recordings were analyzed. The intervention group had higher AWCs (rate ratio, 1.52; 95% CI, 1.05-2.19; P=.03) at 36weeks, increased their AWCs between all recordings, and had lower rates of 2-year receptive language scores <7 (10% vs 38%; P<.02). The intervention was associated with 80% decreased odds of a language composite score of <85 (aOR, 0.20; 95% CI, 0.05-0.78; P=.02), and 90% decreased odds of a receptive score of <7 (0.10; 95% CI, 0.02-0.46; P=.003); there was no association found with cognitive scores. Increases in AWC and conversational turns between 32 and 36weeks were independently associated with improved 2-year BSID-III language scores for both study groups. Short-term parent-driven language enrichment in the neonatal intensive care unit contributes to increased AWCs at 36weeks and improved 2-year language scores. In adjusted analyses, increases in conversational turns and AWCs at 36weeks were independently associated with improved language scores. This low-cost, easily implemented intervention can potentially help to mitigate speech delays among preterm infants. Registered with www. gov, NCT02528227.

Preliminary Data: Powered Mobility Intervention With Language Monitoring for Children With Cerebral Palsy

Purpose: Adapted ride-on cars offer an affordable mobility intervention that provides broader access to a child's environment. Such newfound independence is a unique opportunity to examine changes in environmental language and communicative participation as children acquire mobility. New technologies such as the Language Environmental Analysis (LENA) system hold promise for evaluating naturalistic language interactions but have not yet been applied to children with cerebral palsy with physical and/or communication impairments. This study sought to use LENA with a sample of children with cerebral palsy to determine the feasibility of monitoring environmental language patterns during longitudinal mobility intervention. Method: LENA's adult word counts, conversational turns, and child vocalizations were compared across three time points for participants aged 16–49 months with a range of communication skills (indexed by Communication Function Classification System Levels I–IV). Results: Feasibility was established with acceptable criterion validity during active drive time. Results had large effect sizes, likely diluted by sample size and heterogeneity. Conclusions: Limitations include small sample size, nonprescriptive use of powered mobility devices, and lack of control group. Future studies should incorporate these features to more closely examine communication patterns.

Promoting Adolescents' Social Responsibility through Parent-Adolescent Conversations about the COVID-19 Pandemic

PurposeThis longitudinal mixed-method study examined the content and qualities of parent-adolescent conversations about the COVID-19 pandemic, and whether discourse about social responsibility (i.e., care for others and health protective behaviors [HPBs]) within conversations predicted changes in adolescents' socially responsible behavior across the first year of the pandemic. MethodsParticipants were 122 ethnically/racially diverse parent-adolescent dyads from Southern California. In spring 2020 (Time 1), adolescents completed an online survey measuring their engagement in HPBs (e.g., social distancing) and prosociality (both pandemic-specific and global). A few months following survey completion (Time 2), parent-adolescent dyads engaged in an audio-recorded conversation about the pandemic. In winter 2020 (Time 3), adolescents' engagement in HPBs and prosociality were reassessed via an online survey. ResultsDyads spent 25% of conversational turns, on average, discussing social responsibility (4% and 21% of turns discussing care for others and HPBs, respectively). Internal state language reflecting emotion terms was positively correlated with the proportion of conversational turns spent discussing care for others and negatively associated with conversational turns spent discussing HPBs. Regression analyses revealed that both care for others and HPB conversation themes uniquely predicted increases in adolescents' engagement in HPBs over time; however, care for others was a stronger predictor (β = 0.24 vs. β = 0.16). Discussions about care for others (but not HPBs) predicted increases in pandemic-specific prosociality, but not global prosocial behavior. DiscussionParent-adolescent conversations may be rich ground for the socialization of adolescents' social responsibility during crises and can inform best practices for engaging adolescents in current and future community health initiatives.

The Language Environment at Home of Children With (a Suspicion of) a Developmental Language Disorder and Relations With Standardized Language Measures.

This study compares the home language environments of children with (a suspicion of) developmental language disorder (DLD) with that of children with typical development (TD). It does so by adopting new technology that automatically provides metrics about children's language environment (Language ENvironment Analysis [LENA]). In addition, relationships between LENA metrics and standardized language tests are explored in the DLD group. Ninety-nine 2- to 4-year-old toddlers participated: 59 with (a suspicion of) DLD and 40 with TD. LENA metrics on adult word count, conversational turn count, and child vocalization count were obtained. For all children, data on parental education and multilingualism were available. In the DLD group, data were collected on receptive and expressive vocabulary and grammar, and on nonverbal intelligence, using standardized tests. We found lower adult word count, conversational turn count, and child vocalization count in the DLD group, independent of multilingualism but not of parental education. In the DLD group, receptive vocabulary was related to conversational turn count and child vocalization count, but not to adult word count. Expressive vocabulary, receptive grammar, and expressive grammar were not related to LENA metrics. Toddlers with (a suspicion of) DLD vocalize less at home than children with TD. They also hear fewer adult words and experience fewer conversational turns. Children with DLD's language outcomes are to a limited extent related to language environment at home. Conversational turns and child vocalizations are in this respect more important than adult words, in line with findings for TD populations.

THE USE OF TURN-TAKING STRATEGY BETWEEN INTROVERTED AND EXTROVERTED STUDENTS IN ENGLISH AS FOREIGN LANGUAGE (EFL)

Language is the main aspect of education. Improving English as a foreign language (EFL) learners’ speaking skills is a crucial communication requirement. In speaking skills, aspects of speech such as pronunciation, intonation, tone, stress, and fluency are highly emphasized. Furthermore, mental processes such as understanding, reasoning, adapting, turn-taking, and responding also play an essential role in speech. Turn-taking is a hugely important thing in conversation, especially in discussion. To take a turn in conversation is a big deal. Personality should consider factors in learning a second language. Extroverts and introverts have different learning styles, which will affect their speaking English learning. This research aimed to seek the used turn-taking pattern and strategies between student extroverts and introverts. This research was conducted using a qualitative-descriptive approach design to the comprehensive summarization of specific events experienced by individuals or small peer groups. The subjects of this research were students in the English Education Department of Universitas Muhammadiyah Surabaya for the 2021 final examination. As a result, Extroverted students are more comfortable and eager to take the lead in initiating conversations and introverts are more comfortable in the role of responders. While introverts and extroverts utilize similar strategies for turn-taking, their implementation differs; introverts may employ structured pauses and thoughtful contributions, whereas extroverts often engage in dynamic and spontaneous exchanges to ensure active conversation participation.

The Language ENvironment Analysis system (LENA): A validation study with Italian-learning children.

This study is a validation of the LENA system for the Italian language. In Study 1, to test LENA's accuracy, seventy-two 10-minute samples extracted from daylong LENA recordings were manually transcribed for 12 children longitudinally observed at 1;0 and 2;0. We found strong correlations between LENA and human estimates in the number of Adult Word Count (AWC) and Child Vocalisations Count (CVC) and a weak correlation between LENA and human estimates in Conversational Turns Count (CTC). In Study 2, to test the concurrent validity, direct and indirect language measures were considered on a sample of 54 recordings (19 children). Correlational analyses showed that LENA's CVC and CTC were significantly related to the children's vocal production, a parent report measure of prelexical vocalizations and the vocal reactivity scores. These results confirm that the automatic analyses performed by the LENA device are reliable and powerful for studying language development in Italian-speaking infants.

In pursuit of a more unified method to measuring classroom dialogue: The dialogue elements to compound constructs approach

There is increasing scholarly agreement about the key features of academically productive classroom dialogue. Yet, despite this emerging conceptual consensus, the ways in which it is measured and coded in quantitative research efforts vary significantly. In order to communicate, compare and integrate findings from this rich body of empirical research and to further theory refinement, a more unified approach to measuring classroom dialogue is needed. We selected seven well-known coding frameworks and identified a set of nine particle-like dialogue elements (DEs), that lie at the basis of different coding categories, appear frequently in classroom dialogue, and can be reliably coded at the conversational turn level. We then demonstrate how a much larger set of “compound” dialogue constructs can be recreated post-coding, by flagging co-occurrences of different DEs and accounting for the majority of coding categories in each of the seven frameworks. This Dialogue Elements to Compound Constructs Approach (DECCA) then enables interrater reliability, while simultaneously maintaining the flexibility and comprehensiveness needed to enable quantitative research on a large variety of research questions with a single methodological approach. The implications for future research and theory are discussed.

Let the child take the lead: Intervention for enriching parent-child interactions during shared book reading

Shared book reading (SBR) emphasizes dialogue interaction between parents and children during book sharing, as engaging children in conversations during SBR can facilitate language skill development. This time-series study investigated the effect of SBR intervention on the interactional behaviors of parents and children (N = 210 dyads) and children’s expressive language skill development. The parents in the experimental group received a five-week SBR online training. Parents in both the treatment and control groups audio-recorded reading storybooks with their children at baseline (pre-test), post-intervention (post-test 1), and follow-up stages (post-test 2). Response length, number of conversation turns, and children’s expressive language ability were measured. Subsequently, the performance of the experimental and control groups was compared. The findings showed that parents in the experimental group were more responsive, offering significantly longer responses and more conversational turns than the control group. Additionally, children in the experimental group exhibited significantly greater expressive language skills. These findings suggest that the intervention can enhance parents’ ability to facilitate conversations during SBR and improve children’s expressive language skills.

A comparison of automatic and manual measures of turn-taking in monolingual and bilingual contexts.

The Language ENvironment Analysis system (LENA) records children's language environment and provides an automatic estimate of adult-child conversational turn count (CTC) by automatically identifying adult and child speech in close temporal proximity. To assess the reliability of this measure, we examine correlation and agreement between LENA's CTC estimates and manual measurement of adult-child turn-taking in two corpora collected in the USA: a bilingual corpus of Spanish-English-speaking families with infants between 4 and 22 months (n = 37), and a corpus of monolingual families with English-speaking 5-year-olds (n = 56). In each corpus for each child, 100 30-second segments were extracted from daylong recordings in two ways, yielding a total of 9300 minutes of manually annotated audio. LENA's CTC estimate for the same segments was obtained through the LENA software. The two measures of CTC had low correlations for the segments from the monolingual 5-year-olds sampled in both ways, and somewhat higher correlations for the bilingual samples. LENA substantially overestimated CTC on average, relative to manual measurement, for three out of four analysis conditions, and limits of agreement were wide in all cases. Segment-level analyses demonstrated that accidental contiguity had the largest individual impact on LENA's average CTC error, affecting 12-17% of analyzed segments. Other factors significantly contributing to CTC error were speech from other children, presence of multiple adults, and presence of electronic media. These results indicate wide discrepancies between LENA's CTC estimates and manual CTCs, and call into question the comparability of LENA's CTC measure across participants, conditions, and developmental time points.

Defisit Tindak Tutur Penderita Skizofrenia di Balikpapan: Kajian Pragmatik Klinis

This study aims to examine the form of speech act deficit and conversation structure deficit in the speech of schizophrenia patients at Klinik Ego Balikpapan. This research is qualitative research with a clinical pragmatics approach. The research location is at Klinik Kesehatan Jiwa Ego Balikpapan. This research's data collection technique is free listening (SBLC). The data analysis technique is through data collection, reduction, presentation, analysis, and conclusion. The results of the research on the form of speech act deficit of schizophrenia patients: (1) descriptive locution deficit, (2) assertive illocution deficit, and (3) declarative illocution deficit. The conversational structure deficits found: were (1) conversational turns, (2) adjacent pairs, and (3) pauses. Patients experience pragmatic deficits with a pattern of not being able to speak with a completely clear sentence pronunciation, often repeating sentences, and their speech is slightly slower than normal people in general. However, interlocutors can accept the communication skills of schizophrenic patients because they have good information power. Patients can be invited to talk even though the answer response is chattering according to their wishes as a form of their delusions, and there are some utterances with words with unclear meanings.

Speech Entrainment in Adolescent Conversations: A Developmental Perspective.

Defined as the similarity of speech behaviors between interlocutors, speech entrainment plays an important role in successful adult conversations. According to theoretical models of entrainment and research on motoric, cognitive, and social developmental milestones, the ability to entrain should develop throughout adolescence. However, little is known about the specific developmental trajectory or the role of speech entrainment in conversational outcomes of this age group. The purpose of this study is to characterize speech entrainment patterns in the conversations of neurotypical early adolescents. This study utilized a corpus of 96 task-based conversations between adolescents between the ages of 9 and 14 years and a comparison corpus of 32 task-based conversations between adults. For each conversational turn, two speech entrainment scores were calculated for 429 acoustic features across rhythmic, articulatory, and phonatory dimensions. Predictive modeling was used to evaluate the degree of entrainment and relationship between entrainment and two metrics of conversational success. Speech entrainment increased throughout early adolescence but did not reach the level exhibited in conversations between adults. Additionally, speech entrainment was predictive of both conversational quality and conversational efficiency. Furthermore, models that included all acoustic features and both entrainment types performed better than models that only included individual acoustic feature sets or one type of entrainment. Our findings show that speech entrainment skills are largely developed during early adolescence with continued development possibly occurring across later adolescence. Additionally, results highlight the role of speech entrainment in successful conversation in this population, suggesting the import of continued exploration of this phenomenon in both neurotypical and neurodivergent adolescents. We also provide evidence of the value of using holistic measures that capture the multidimensionality of speech entrainment and provide a validated methodology for investigating entrainment across multiple acoustic features and entrainment types.

Back-and-forth conversation during parent–child co-use of an educational app game

ABSTRACT Parent–child back-and-forth conversation is recognized as important for early development. Accordingly, child media use guidelines encourage parents to co-use media, including mobile media, with children. However, information on the types of conversational interactions that occur during co-use of apps, and the best ways for parents to encourage back-and-forth conversation in this context, is lacking. This study described parent–child conversational turns and explored parent verbal behaviours in relation to the frequency of conversational turns in a sample of 44 parent and preschool-aged child dyads, who were videotaped co-using an educational app. Observed conversational turns most frequently involved simple naming or exchanges about app procedures, and rarely included expanded or distanced talk. Parent reflections of the app narration and content-related talk were positively related to conversational turns, while praises and directiveness were negatively related. Results suggest the need for a nuanced approach to guiding parents to make the most of co-use interactions.

Study of Classroom Discourse of English-Major Interns from the Perspective of Functional Linguistics

Based on the qualitative analysis of classroom discourse of English-major interns, this study investigates the characteristics and causes of classroom discourse of English-major interns in underdeveloped areas in western China from the perspective of functional linguistics, and endeavors to explore the reasons for these characteristics from social context. The results show that the classroom discourse of English-major interns has the following three characteristics: 1) code-switching is common; 2) the types of clauses are mainly imperative sentences, declarative sentences with rising intonation; 3) teachers talk a lot and dominate the conversational turn. Code-switching reflects the shortage of target language input and outdated teaching methods in English class; and the second characteristic just echoes with existing research; teacher’s dominance over conversational turn indicates interns’ imitation of their instructors’ teaching mode, hoping to construct their teacher identity. This paper puts forward relevant suggestions to the above-mentioned problems, including adopting a research-guided teaching in elementary education, reinforcing the supervision of college internship instructors, diversifying the way interns constructing their teacher identities.

Language exposure during infancy is negatively associated with white matter microstructure in the arcuate fasciculus

Decades of research have established that the home language environment, especially quality of caregiver speech, supports language acquisition during infancy. However, the neural mechanisms behind this phenomenon remain under studied. In the current study, we examined associations between the home language environment and structural coherence of white matter tracts in 52 typically developing infants from English speaking homes in a western society. Infants participated in at least one MRI brain scan when they were 3, 6, 12, and/or 24 months old. Home language recordings were collected when infants were 9 and/or 15 months old. General linear regression models indicated that infants who heard the most adult words and participated in the most conversational turns at 9 months of age also had the lowest fractional anisotropy in the left posterior parieto-temporal arcuate fasciculus at 24 months. Similarly, infants who vocalized the most at 9 months also had the lowest fractional anisotropy in the same tract at 6 months of age. This is one of the first studies to report significant associations between caregiver speech collected in the home and white matter structural coherence in the infant brain. The results are in line with prior work showing that protracted white matter development during infancy confers a cognitive advantage.

Illocutionary context and management allocation of emoji and other graphicons in Mexican parent school WhatsApp communities

The purpose of this study is to analyze the interactional achievement of emoji and other graphicons in WhatsApp communities created by and for school parents. Using a conversation analytic approach, 4824 messages written by 161 Mexican Spanish users, members of six different WhatsApp communities were examined in this study. The results show that task-oriented speech acts were the most common in this community of practice. Speech acts such as requests and responses to requests were mainly accompanied by graphicons. It was also observed that these speech acts formed adjacency pairs in which requests most often formed the first part of the sequence. It was also found that depending on the communicative purpose of the message and the type of speech act used, the graphicons functioned as either upgraders or mitigators. Graphicons also have the function of managing WhatsApp conversations by signalling conversational turns. Another finding revealed that standalone graphicons formed part of an adjacency system, replacing the verbal part of the message. Drawing on Locher and Watts’ (2005) relational work model, the analysis revealed that the interactional use of graphicons was influenced by the politeness rules of this community of practice.

Towards an interactional grammar of interjections: Expressing compassion in four Australian languages

ABSTRACT Words classified as ‘interjections’ tend to be treated in descriptive grammars as outside of morphosyntax, too contextually bound to warrant a systematic description of their syntagmatic relations. In this paper we argue that if one takes grammar to include recurrent patterns in conversational turns that are routinely connected with particular interactional functions, such as assessments and acknowledgements, then the grammar of interjections can indeed be incorporated into language description in ways that show the systematic relationships between form and function. We use a comparative corpus of conversations in four typologically distinct Australian Aboriginal languages (Garrwa, Gija, Jaru and Murrinhpatha) to illustrate how such an analysis may be developed. We focus on forms which have been described as ‘compassionate interjections’, which express that the speaker takes a compassionate affective stance towards something described in prior talk or evident in the situation. Despite differences in the morphological properties of these words in the languages we compare here, they display remarkable similarities in where they occur within conversational turns, and the functions they serve in different turn-related positions.

The Effect of Familiarity on Conversation Turns in Dyadic Conversation Among Chinese Older Adults

This study explored the effect of mutual familiarity of interlocutors on quantitative contributions of conversation turns in dyadic conversation among Mandarin Chinese-speaking older adults. A quantitative quasi-experimental study was conducted. A total of 42 healthy older adults aged 65 years or over were recruited. Percentages of contributed conversation turns for each interlocutor were computed as frequency of interlocutor conversation turns divided by total frequency of dyad conversation turns multiplied by 100. Quantitative asymmetries were differences of percentages of contributed conversation turns. A total of 60 ten-minute dyadic conversation sessions were conducted, including 30 mutually familiar-older-adult sessions (FOAS) and 30 mutually unfamiliar-older-adult sessions (UOAS). Quantitatively asymmetrical contributions of conversation turns occurred in both FOAS and UOAS, and quantitative contributions of conversation turns in FOAS were significantly more asymmetrical than those in UOAS. There were three limitations to the current study, including limited representations of everyday conversation contexts (e.g., at home); no consideration of the types of conversation modes; and no consideration of sensitivity to conversation as one of the inclusion criteria for research participants. Quantitatively asymmetrical contributions of conversation turns occurred in both mutually FOAS and UOAS dyads among Mandarin Chinese-speaking older adults. Moreover, quantitative contributions of conversation turns in mutually FOAS dyads were significantly more asymmetrical than those in mutually UOAS dyads. Sufficient knowledge of changes in conversation turns in dyadic conversation among healthy older adults might reduce misperceptions of older adults suffering from neurological disease.

Sylvia's Story

As a response to Roland Barthes's Fragments d’un discours amoureux, Agnès Thurnauer offers the story of an encounter mediated through a painting. It's a story about a shared love of people in paint, shared but refracted, common gender differentiated in the love of different styles, and in different experiences of the words and commodities that go with them. It's a story of gender, of body-object turned body-subject in a history lifted from the public, and re-mobilised in the turns of conversation. It's the story of a friendship that ignites re-modelled ways of relating and living.

Depression detection via conversation turn classification

Depression detection via conversation turn classification