The coordination of speaking and listening in dialogue

Morgan, Blaire Elizabeth (2013). The coordination of speaking and listening in dialogue. University of Birmingham. Ph.D.

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Abstract

The present research examined the coordination of speech production and speech comprehension. Whilst conversing with others we must coordinate the planning of our own speech output with the comprehension of our speech partner(s)’s utterances. However, very little is known about the coordination. Through examining participants’ speech and eye-movements, this research questioned how people manage to coordinate their speaking and listening in dialogue. In 6 studies I demonstrate that tracking prediction processes offers an effective measure of online comprehension. When employing an appropriate dual-task, where two linguistic tasks competed for attention, cognitive resources had to be shared between the two tasks. Where necessary, participants actively engaged in strategies that helped to reduce processing demands including separation of production and comprehension, comparable processing of simple and complex syntactic structures, and using online prediction to preserve capacity. These capacity saving processes and strategy use enabled speech production to be effectively coordinated with speech comprehension in an experimental setting.

Type of Work:

Thesis (Doctorates > Ph.D.)

Award Type:

Doctorates > Ph.D.

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