Conversing in the presence of a competing conversation: effects on speech production

Aubanel, Vincent; Cooke, Martin; Villegas, Julián; Lecumberri, Maria Luisa García

doi:10.21437/interspeech.2011-709

Cited by 7 publications

(7 citation statements)

References 19 publications

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“…This interval can either be negative, indicating an acoustic overlap of the interlocutors’ speech signals, or positive, indicating an acoustic gap between the speech signals. The FTO distribution from Levinson and Torreira (2015) can be seen in Figure 1 and is representative of the distributions that have been observed in other studies (e.g., Aubanel et al., 2011, Brady, 1968; Heldner & Edlund, 2010; Norwine & Murphy, 1938; Stivers et al., 2009). In general, these distributions are unimodal and right-skewed, with a peak around 200 ms.…”

supporting

confidence: 74%

“…While the manipulations increased the completion time and changed aspects of their speech production, they may not have been challenging enough to see large delays or increases in the spread in turn-timing. Aubanel et al (2011) found that when interlocutors conversed in the presence of a background conversational pair, they delayed their responses. They further observed both increased speech levels as well as decreased speech rates in the presence of a background pair.…”

Section: Timing Of Turn-takingmentioning

confidence: 98%

“…While the field of conversational analysis has investigated many aspects of interactive communication, it has traditionally focused on conversations conducted in favorable acoustic environments with normal-hearing (NH) interlocutors. However, recent studies have started to investigate how some factors, which are known to affect speech intelligibility, influence conversational behavior (e.g., Aubanel et al, 2011;Beechey et al, 2018Beechey et al, , 2019Beechey et al, , 2020Hadley et al, 2019). The motivation for the present study was to investigate if more challenging communication conditions influenced the timing of turn-taking in conversation.…”

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confidence: 99%

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Effects of Noise and Second Language on Conversational Dynamics in Task Dialogue

2021

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This study provides a framework for measuring conversational dynamics between conversational partners (interlocutors). Conversations from 20 pairs of young, normal-hearing, native-Danish talkers were recorded when speaking in both quiet and noise (70 dBA sound pressure level [SPL]) and in Danish and English. Previous studies investigating the intervals from when one talker stops talking to when the next one starts, termed floor-transfer offsets (FTOs), suggest that typical turn-taking requires interlocutors to predict when the current talker will finish their turn. We hypothesized that adding noise and/or speaking in a second language (L2) would increase the communication difficulty and result in longer and more variable FTOs. The median and interquartile range of FTOs increased slightly in noise, and in L2, there was a small increase in interquartile range but a small decrease in the median of FTO durations. It took the participants longer to complete the task in both L2 and noise, indicating increased communication difficulty. The average duration of interpausal units, that is, units of connected speech surrounded by silences of 180 ms or more, increased by 18% in noise and 8% in L2. These findings suggest that talkers held their turn for longer, allowing more time for speech understanding and planning. In L2, participants spoke slower, and in both L2 and noise, they took fewer turns. These changes in behavior may have offset some of the increased difficulty when communicating in noise or L2. We speculate that talkers prioritize the maintenance of turn-taking timing over other speech measures.

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supporting

confidence: 74%

Section: Timing Of Turn-takingmentioning

confidence: 98%

mentioning

confidence: 99%

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Effects of Noise and Second Language on Conversational Dynamics in Task Dialogue

2021

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“…Whether seated face-to-face or in separate locations (e.g., telephone call), multiple studies have found that the typical floor-transfer offset (FTO), i.e. the interval from when one person stops talking to when the next person starts, is slightly positive with modal response times around 200 ms in dialogue (Aubanel, Cooke, Villegas, & Garcia Lecumberri, 2011; Brady, 1968; Heldner & Edlund, 2010; Levinson & Torreira, 2015; Norwine & Murphy, 1938; Stivers et al, 2009). This timing of turns is universal across languages and cultures (Stivers et al, 2009), and it has been suggested that people choose to optimize for socially appropriate timing of responses at the expense of increased cognitive effort (Barthel & Sauppe, 2019).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…We expected an increase in communication effort induced by (I) adding background noise, (II) having a hearing loss, and (III) not providing hearing-aid amplification to the HI interlocutor. We expected that changes in the three factors (I-III) would cause the following alterations in the conversational dynamics: (1) Slower, (2) more variable, and (3) fewer floor transfers (Aubanel et al, 2011;Sørensen, 2021a;Sørensen et al, 2021), as well as (4) increased speech levels (Beechey et al, 2018(Beechey et al, , 2020bSørensen, 2021a;Sørensen et al, 2021;Watson et al, 2020) with (5) slower articulation rates (Hazan et al, 2018;Tuomainen, Hazan, & Taschenberger, 2019) and (6) longer IPUs (Beechey et al, 2018;Sørensen, 2021a;Sørensen et al, 2021;Watson et al, 2020). For the DiapixDK task, we also expected to find (7) longer task completion times Sørensen, 2021a, Sørensen et al, 2021 and that (8) the proportion of time that HI participants spoke would increase (Jaworski & Stephens, 1998;Lu et al, 2021;Stephens & Zhao, 1996;Sørensen, 2021a).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Effects of Hearing-Aid Amplification and Noise on Conversational Dynamics Between Normal-Hearing and Hearing-Impaired Talkers

2022

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There is a long-standing tradition to assess hearing-aid benefits using lab-based speech intelligibility tests. Towards a more everyday-like scenario, the current study investigated the effects of hearing-aid amplification and noise on face-to-face communication between two conversational partners. Eleven pairs, consisting of a younger normal-hearing (NH) and an older hearing-impaired (HI) participant, solved spot-the-difference tasks while their conversations were recorded. In a two-block randomized design, the tasks were solved in quiet or noise, both with and without the HI participant receiving hearing-aid amplification with active occlusion cancellation. In the presence of 70 dB SPL babble noise, participants had fewer, slower, and less well-timed turn-starts, while speaking louder with longer inter-pausal units (IPUs, stretches of continuous speech surrounded by silence) and reducing their articulation rates. All these changes are indicative of increased communication effort. The timing of turn-starts by the HI participants exhibited more variability than that of their NH conversational partners. In the presence of background noise, the timing of turn-starts by the HI participants became even more variable, and their NH partners spoke louder. When the HI participants were provided with hearing-aid amplification, their timing of turn-starts became faster, they increased their articulation rate, and they produced shorter IPUs, all indicating reduced communication effort. In conclusion, measures of the conversational dynamics showed that background noise increased the communication effort, especially for the HI participants, and that providing hearing-aid amplification caused the HI participant to behave more like their NH conversational partner, especially in quiet situations.

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Behavioral dynamics of conversation, (mis)communication and coordination in noisy environments

Miles,

Weisser,

Kallen

et al. 2023

Sci Rep

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During conversations people coordinate simultaneous channels of verbal and nonverbal information to hear and be heard. But the presence of background noise levels such as those found in cafes and restaurants can be a barrier to conversational success. Here, we used speech and motion-tracking to reveal the reciprocal processes people use to communicate in noisy environments. Conversations between twenty-two pairs of typical-hearing adults were elicited under different conditions of background noise, while standing or sitting around a table. With the onset of background noise, pairs rapidly adjusted their interpersonal distance and speech level, with the degree of initial change dependent on noise level and talker configuration. Following this transient phase, pairs settled into a sustaining phase in which reciprocal speech and movement-based coordination processes synergistically maintained effective communication, again with the magnitude of stability of these coordination processes covarying with noise level and talker configuration. Finally, as communication breakdowns increased at high noise levels, pairs exhibited resetting behaviors to help restore communication—decreasing interpersonal distance and/or increasing speech levels in response to communication breakdowns. Approximately 78 dB SPL defined a threshold where behavioral processes were no longer sufficient for maintaining effective conversation and communication breakdowns rapidly increased.

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Conversing in the presence of a competing conversation: effects on speech production

Cited by 7 publications

References 19 publications

Effects of Noise and Second Language on Conversational Dynamics in Task Dialogue

Effects of Noise and Second Language on Conversational Dynamics in Task Dialogue

The Effects of Hearing-Aid Amplification and Noise on Conversational Dynamics Between Normal-Hearing and Hearing-Impaired Talkers

Behavioral dynamics of conversation, (mis)communication and coordination in noisy environments

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