AUTHOR=Barthel Mathias , Meyer Antje S. , Levinson Stephen C. 

TITLE=Next Speakers Plan Their Turn Early and Speak after Turn-Final “Go-Signals”

JOURNAL=Frontiers in Psychology

VOLUME=Volume 8 - 2017

YEAR=2017

URL=https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/psychology/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2017.00393

DOI=10.3389/fpsyg.2017.00393

ISSN=1664-1078

ABSTRACT=In conversation, turn-taking is usually fluid, with next speakers taking their turn right after the
end of the previous turn. One reason for this fluency is early content planning of the next turn,
if possible while the current turn is still coming in, as found by Barthel et al. (2016) using the
list-completion paradigm. The present study makes use of the same paradigm, analyzing speech
onset latencies and eye-movements of participants in a task-oriented dialogue with a confederate.
Participants named objects visible on their computer screen in response to utterances that did or
did not contain cues to the end of the incoming turn. Participants were found to start planning their
response as early as possible, replicating the findings of Barthel et al. (2016), and to use turn-final
cues to turn-completion as ‘go-signals’ to initiate their response. The results are consistent with
models of turn-taking that assume next speakers to start planning their response as soon as
the incoming turn’s message can be understood and to monitor the incoming turn for cues to
turn-completion so as to initiate their response when turn-transition becomes relevant.