Breathing and speech planning in turn-taking
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Transcript of Breathing and speech planning in turn-taking
Breathing and speech planningin turn-taking
Francisco TorreiraSara Bögels
Stephen LevinsonMax Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics
Nijmegen, The Netherlands
A psycholinguistic puzzle
In conversation, the most frequent transition between speakers takes only a few hundred ms(e.g. Stivers et al., 2009; Heldner & Edlund, 2010)
B’s turn
A’s turn 100-300 ms
A psycholinguistic puzzle
Planning and producing language takes time:- word-picture naming: 600 ms (Levelt et al., 1999)
- simple sentence production: 1500 ms (Griffin & Bock, 2000)
B’s turn
A’s turn
B’s production planning
> 600 ms
100-300 ms
A psycholinguistic puzzle
Speakers often plan their turns in overlap with their interlocutors’ turns (Levinson, 2013)
B’s turn
A’s turn
B’s production planning
Direct evidence for overlapping production and comprehension during conversation is scarce
Can the breathing behavior of interlocutors provide such evidence?
A psycholinguistic puzzle
Direct evidence for overlapping production and comprehension during conversation is scarce
Can the breathing behavior of interlocutors provide such evidence?
A psycholinguistic puzzle
Research questions
In read speech, deeper and longer inbreaths before longer utterances Whalen & Kinsella-Shaw, 1997; Fuchs et al. 2013
What about spontaneous conversation?
What is the timing of speakers’ inbreaths relative to their interlocutors’ turns?
Conversational corpus withRespitrace inductive plethysmography
Initial observations
As in controlled experiments (e.g. McFarland 2001):– Vital cycles
– Speech cycles
But also (as in Bailly et al. 2013 for collaborative reading):– Speech-adapted vital cycles?– Apneas: listeners often stop breathing for several
seconds!
Materials
Conversational context in which a turn transition is relevant: Q & A
Assistant identified Q & A sequences in 6 dyadic conversations (~ 5 h)
We restricted the dataset following these criteria:– Answer is relevant to the question– Syntactically marked (wh-word, SV inversion) or intonationally marked (L* H-H%, H* H-H% or H*L-H%)
Breathing in Q&A sequences
B’sanswer
A’squestion
Time
B’s inbreath
Measurements
B’sanswer
A’squestion
Time
Asnwerers’ inbreaths that occurred after the beginning of the question
B’s inbreath
Measurements
B’sanswer
A’squestion
Time
Acoustic signs in the speech signal attributable to either a lexical item or particle
B’s inbreath
Measurements
B’sanswer
A’squestion
Time
First point of silence, syntactic completion, and prosodic completion
Acoustic signs in the speech signal attributable to either a lexical item or particle
Breathing behavior and answer length
B’sanswer
A’squestion
Time
B’s inbreath
Presence vs absenceDepth
Duration
Presence of an inbreath
62%
38%
INBREATH
NO INBREATH
Not all answers are preceded by an inbreath
n=145
Answer duration & inbreaths
β = 949, t = 3.95, p < .0005
Inbreath depth and answer duration
Answ
er d
urati
on (m
s)
Speaker-normalized Inbreath depth
β = -0.03, t = -0.19, p = 0.85
Timing relative to question end
B’sanswer
A’squestion
Time
B’s inbreath
Inbreath timingto question end
Answer
Questionquestion
Inbreath
Answer
Questionquestion
Inbreath
Inbreath timingto question end
Answer
Questionquestion
Inbreath
Inbreath timingto question end
Answer
Questionquestion
Inbreath
answer < 2.5 sanswer > 2.5 s
Inbreath timingto question end
Answer
Questionquestion
Inbreath
answer < 2.5 sanswer > 2.5 s
Speech inbreaths?
Partly vital?
Inbreath timingto question end
Timing relative to answer start
B’sanswer
A’squestion
Time
B’s inbreath
Inbreath timingto answer start
Answer
Questionquestion
Inbreath
Inbreath timingto answer start
Answer
Questionquestion
Inbreath
-650 ms
Is the timing of answerers’ inbreaths sensitive to where questions end?
Inbreath
We examined the relationship between:- Gap duration
- Inbreath timing to answer start
Answer
Questionquestion
Is the timing of answerers’ inbreaths sensitive to where questions end?
Answer
Questionquestion
Inbreath
Are answerer’s inbreaths anchored to question ends or answer starts?
Dist
ance
to a
nsw
er st
art (
ms)
Gap duration (ms)β = 0.48, t = 10.4, p < 0.0001
ConclusionsInbreaths are more likely to occur before long answers
> breathing behavior can be informative about speech planning in conversation too
The timing of inbreaths before answers is sensitive to the timing of question ends, and is very often aligned with it.
> evidence of interlocutors’ orientation to turn ends> speech planning often starts early during the interlocutor’s turn:
B’sanswer
A’squestion
B’s inbreath
Inbreath preparation
Decision to take an inbreath
contingent on answer length 140-320 ms
Draper et al., 1960
ReferencesBailly, G., Rochet-Capellan, A., and Vilain, C. (2013). Adaptation of respiratory patterns in collaborative reading. Proceedings of Interspeech 2013.Draper, M. H., Ladefoged, P., and Whitteridge, D. (1960) Expiratory pressures and airflow during speech. British Medical Journal, 1(5189): 1837–1842.Fuchs, S., Petrone, C., Krivokapic, J., and Hoole, P. (2013). Acoustic and respiratory evidence for utterance planning in German. Journal of Phonetics, 41(1):29–47.Griffin, Z. M., and Bock, K. (2000). What the eyes say about speaking. Psychological Science, 11:274–279 Heldner, M. and Edlund, J. (2010). Pauses, gaps and overlaps in conversations. Journal of Phonetics, 38:555—568.Levelt, W., Roelofs, A., and Meyer, A. (1999). A theory of lexical access in speech production. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 22(1):1–37.McFarland, D. H. (2001). Respiratory markers of conversational interaction. Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research, 44:128–143.Stivers, T., Enfield, N. J., Brown, P., Englert, C., Hayashi, M., Heinemann, T., Hoymann, G., Rossano, F., de Ruiter, J. P., Yoon, K.-E., and Levinson, S. C. (2009). Universals and cultural variation in turn-taking in conversation. PNAS, 106(26):10587–10592.Whalen, D. H. and Kinsella-Shaw, J. M. (1997). Exploring the relationship of inspiration duration to utterance duration. Phonetica, 54:138–152.