Turn-taking in Human Communication – Origins and Implications for Language Processing

doi:10.1016/j.tics.2015.10.010

Trends in Cognitive Sciences

Volume 20, Issue 1, January 2016, Pages 6-14

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tics.2015.10.010 Get rights and content

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The bulk of language usage is conversational, involving rapid exchange of turns. New information about the turn-taking system shows that this transition between speakers is generally more than threefold faster than language encoding.

To maintain this pace of switching, participants must predict the content and timing of the incoming turn and begin language encoding as soon as possible, even while still processing the incoming turn. This intensive cognitive processing has been largely ignored by the language sciences because psycholinguistics has studied language production and comprehension separately from dialog.

This fast pace holds across languages, and across modalities as in sign language. It is also evident in early infancy in ‘proto-conversation’ before infants control language.

Turn-taking or ‘duetting’ has been observed in many other species and is found across all the major clades of the primate order.

Most language usage is interactive, involving rapid turn-taking. The turn-taking system has a number of striking properties: turns are short and responses are remarkably rapid, but turns are of varying length and often of very complex construction such that the underlying cognitive processing is highly compressed. Although neglected in cognitive science, the system has deep implications for language processing and acquisition that are only now becoming clear. Appearing earlier in ontogeny than linguistic competence, it is also found across all the major primate clades. This suggests a possible phylogenetic continuity, which may provide key insights into language evolution.

Section snippets

Turn-Taking – Part of Universal Infrastructure for Language

Languages differ at every level of construction, from the sounds, to syntax, to meaning [1]. However, there is a striking uniformity in the way language is predominantly used across every language examined – the rapid exchange of short turns (see Glossary) at talking [2]. Although unremarkable in character at first sight, the turn-taking system turns out to shed real insight into language processing, and moreover goes some way to explain why language has the character that it does, organized

The Cognitive Challenge of Turn-Taking

To appreciate the cognitive consequences of the turn-taking system, consider the following findings. Across languages, the modal response time (gaps between turns) is around 200 ms 2, 4, 5, the average duration of a single syllable. This is at the limit of human performance for a simple start signal with a single possible response (cf. a starting pistol beginning a race); reaction time systematically slows with the number of choices between response types (Hick's Law), and languages have

Turn-Taking Partially Constrains Linguistic Diversity

Such hungry cognitive processing might be expected to leave a significant imprint on the structure of languages, and in some respects it does. The fact that all languages organize their syntax around the clause, the minimal structure expressing a speech act and proposition, is likely an adjustment to the small turn units licensed by the turn-taking system [34]. Similarly, the pressure on response speed and the slow nature of sound encoding put a high premium on information compression – the

Origins of the Turn-Taking System

What then is the origin of the turn-taking system in humans? It might be thought that it is an obvious adaptation to two communicators using a single auditory channel. However, one voice is poor masking for another [42], and in fact the study of heated speech shows that people can respond in overlap to the utterance they are hearing [43]. Most telling, however, is turn-taking in sign languages of the deaf – when due allowance is made for preparatory and held movements, sign languages seem to

Concluding Remarks

This article has advanced five propositions, each with substantial empirical backing, which together suggest a sixth more speculative one:

Proposition 1. Turn-taking among humans is universal, although languages are culture-specific.

Proposition 2. Turn-taking is at the limits of human performance, involving the rapid encoding of complex structures in small chunks and the anticipation of incoming content.

Proposition 3. Languages are surprisingly free to vary despite these functional pressures.

Acknowledgments

The work reported in this article was funded by the European Research Council (Advanced Grant INTERACT 269484) and the Max Planck Gesellschaft. The author would like to thank the many members of the Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics, especially in his department, who have contributed to the research that underlies this paper; and Sara Bögels, Penelope Brown, Elma Hilbrink, Judith Holler, Kobin Kendrick and Francisco Torreira for corrections on a draft.

Glossary

Branching structure: the shape of parsing trees representing the structure of sentences: a verb-final language such as Japanese is likely to have a left-branching structure, whereas a verb-initial language such as Welsh is likely to have a right branching structure which facilitates prediction (on encountering ‘ate’ one can expect an edible and an eater):
Conversation analysis: a branch of sociology that, through careful observation, has shed much light on human interactional language use.
Dialect

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Trends in Cognitive Sciences

OpinionTurn-taking in Human Communication – Origins and Implications for Language Processing

Trends

Section snippets

Turn-Taking – Part of Universal Infrastructure for Language

The Cognitive Challenge of Turn-Taking

Turn-Taking Partially Constrains Linguistic Diversity

Origins of the Turn-Taking System

Concluding Remarks

Acknowledgments

Glossary

J. Phon.

J. Phon.

Cognition

Cognition

J. Exp. Child Psychol.

Curr. Biol.

Anim. Behav.

The myth of language universals: language diversity and its importance for cognitive Science

Behav. Brain Sci.

Universals and cultural variation in turn-taking in conversation

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.

A simplest systematics for the organization of turn-taking in conversation

Language

Timing in turn-taking and its implications for processing models of language

Front. Psychol.

The spatial and temporal signatures of word production components: a critical update

Front. Psychol.

Timed picture naming in seven languages

Psychon. Bull. Rev.

What the eyes say about speaking

Psychol. Sci.

The effects of processing and sequence organisation on the timing of turn taking: a corpus study

Front. Psychol.

Cross-cultural universals and communication structures

Speaking: From Intention to Articulation

Conversation electrified: ERP correlates of speech act recognition in underspecified utterances

PLoS ONE

Neural signatures of response planning occur midway through an incoming question in conversation

Sci. Rep.

Early anticipation lies behind the speed of response in conversation

J. Cogn. Neurosci.

The use of content and timing to predict turn transitions

Front. Psychol.

Prediction of turn-ends based on anticipation of upcoming words

Front. Psychol.

Anticipation in turn-taking: mechanisms and information sources

Front. Psychol.

Breathing for answering: the time course of response planning in conversation

Front. Psychol.

Unaddressed participants’ gaze in multi-person interaction: optimizing recipiency

Front. Psychol.

Projecting the end of a speaker's turn: a cognitive cornerstone of conversation

Language

The development of predictive processes in children's discourse understanding

Dutch and English toddlers’ use of linguistic cues in predicting upcoming turn transitions

Front. Psychol.

Attentional limitations in dual-task performance

Parsing a cognitive task: a characterization of the mind's bottleneck

PLoS Biol.

Shared language: overlap and segregation of the neuronal infrastructure for speaking and listening revealed by functional MRI

Psychol. Sci.

An integrated theory of language production and comprehension

Behav. Brain Sci.

Judgments concerning the valence of inter-turn silence across speakers of American English, Italian, and Japanese

Discourse Processes

The timing and construction of preference: a quantitative study

Discourse Processes

Opinion
Turn-taking in Human Communication – Origins and Implications for Language Processing