Breathing and speech planning in turn-taking

1. Breathing and speech planningin turn-taking Francisco Torreira Sara Bögels Stephen Levinson Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics Nijmegen, The Netherlands

2. 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) 100-300 ms A’s turn B’s turn

3. 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) 100-300 ms • B’s production planning A’s turn > 600 ms B’s turn

4. A psycholinguistic puzzle Speakers often plan their turns in overlap with their interlocutors’ turns (Levinson, 2013) • B’s production planning A’s turn B’s turn

5. A psycholinguistic puzzle Direct evidence for overlapping production and comprehension during conversation is scarce Can the breathing behavior of interlocutors provide such evidence?

6. A psycholinguistic puzzle Direct evidence for overlapping production and comprehension during conversation is scarce Can the breathing behavior of interlocutors provide such evidence?

7. 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?

8. Conversational corpus withRespitrace inductive plethysmography

10. 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!

12. 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%)

13. Breathing in Q&A sequences A’s question B’s answer Time

14. Measurements A’s question B’s inbreath B’s answer Time Asnwerers’ inbreaths that occurred after the beginning of the question

15. Measurements Acoustic signs in the speech signal attributable to either a lexical item or particle A’s question B’s inbreath B’s answer Time

16. Measurements Acoustic signs in the speech signal attributable to either a lexical item or particle A’s question B’s inbreath B’s answer Time First point of silence, syntactic completion, and prosodic completion

17. Breathing behavior and answer length A’s question Presence vs absence Depth Duration B’s inbreath B’s answer Time

18. Presence of an inbreath NO INBREATH INBREATH n=145 Not all answers are preceded by an inbreath

19. Answer duration & inbreaths β = 949, t = 3.95, p < .0005

20. Inbreath depth and answer duration Answer duration (ms) Speaker-normalized Inbreath depth β= -0.03, t = -0.19, p = 0.85

21. Timing relative to question end A’s question B’s inbreath B’s answer Time

22. Inbreath timingto question end Inbreath Question question Answer

23. Inbreath timingto question end Inbreath Question question Answer

24. Inbreath timingto question end Inbreath Question question Answer

25. Inbreath timingto question end Inbreath answer < 2.5 s answer > 2.5 s Question question Answer

26. Inbreath timingto question end Inbreath answer < 2.5 s answer > 2.5 s Speech inbreaths? Question question Partly vital? Answer

27. Timing relative to answer start A’s question B’s inbreath B’s answer Time

28. Inbreath timingto answer start Inbreath Question question Answer

29. Inbreath timingto answer start Inbreath -650 ms Question question Answer

30. Is the timing of answerers’ inbreaths sensitive to where questions end?

31. Is the timing of answerers’ inbreaths sensitive to where questions end? We examined the relationship between: • Gapduration • Inbreath timing to answer start Inbreath Question question Question question Answer Answer Inbreath

32. Are answerer’s inbreaths anchored to question ends or answer starts? Distance to answer start (ms) Gap duration (ms) β= 0.48, t = 10.4, p < 0.0001

33. Conclusions Inbreaths 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: A’s question B’s answer Decision to take an inbreath contingent on answer length B’s inbreath Inbreath preparation 140-320 ms Draper et al., 1960

34. References Bailly, 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.