Learning to speak in time: Perception and production processes involved in conversational turn-taking

学习及时说话：对话轮流中涉及的感知和产生过程

• 批准号: 1225760
• 负责人: Eve Clark
• 金额: $ 1.26万
• 依托单位: Stanford University
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2012
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2012-09-01 至 2014-08-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1225760&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Learning; speak; time; Perception; production

Every conversation is made up of turns at speaking. Many people are surprised to learn that speakers take turns with very little time between speakers (gaps average ~200ms) with hardly any overlaps. This is true of conversation in languages around the world. Since there's no single clue to indicate when someone will finish speaking, listeners must track speech in real time and attend to a variety of cues to when a speaker will end. But what information do participants in a conversation rely on? This project investigates how children and adults take turns 'on time' by studying natural variation in how quickly speakers take their turns, and by measuring onlookers' eye movements as they watch videos of two people talking. This project will investigate how much participants' ability to anticipate the end of a turn relies on words vs. intonation and rhythm (prosody) in everyday speech. Words give information about content, and also about the structure of upcoming speech. Prosody is a continuous cue to how a phrase is structured, and also relates to the words in many cases. Because young children are good at differentiating between some prosodic patterns, but don't yet know much about words or syntax, we hypothesize that their use of cues will differ from adults'. This project will study turn-taking in natural conversations in order to identify the developmental path for this conversational skill. Conversation is the gateway for analyzing interaction with other social beings. For children, conversation is a way to learn about language and the world. Trivial skills for adults, such as knowing when to come in and how to ask relevant questions, take children years to develop. Understanding how children develop these skills should also shed light on how they gain access to the information all around them.

每一次谈话都是由轮流说话组成的。许多人惊讶地发现，发言者轮流发言的时间很短（平均间隔约为 200 毫秒），几乎没有任何重叠。世界各地语言的对话都是如此。由于没有单一的线索表明某人何时会结束讲话，因此听众必须实时跟踪讲话并注意演讲者何时结束的各种提示。但是对话参与者依赖什么信息呢？该项目通过研究说话者轮流速度的自然变化以及测量旁观者在观看两个人说话的视频时的眼球运动，研究儿童和成人如何“按时”轮流。该项目将调查参与者预测回合结束的能力在多大程度上依赖于日常言语中的单词与语调和节奏（韵律）。单词提供有关内容的信息，以及即将到来的演讲的结构信息。韵律是对短语结构的连续提示，并且在许多情况下也与单词相关。由于幼儿擅长区分某些韵律模式，但对单词或语法还不太了解，因此我们假设他们对提示的使用与成人不同。 该项目将研究自然对话中的轮流对话，以确定这种对话技能的发展路径。对话是分析与其他社会存在互动的门户。对于孩子来说，对话是学习语言和世界的一种方式。对于成年人来说，一些琐碎的技能，比如知道什么时候进来以及如何提出相关问题，需要孩子们花费数年的时间来培养。了解孩子如何发展这些技能也应该有助于了解他们如何获取周围的信息。