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，发言者之间的时间很少（平均差距约200毫秒），几乎没有任何重叠。世界各地的语言对话都是如此。由于没有一个单一的线索来表明某人何时会结束讲话，听众必须在真实的时间内跟踪讲话，并注意到讲话者何时结束的各种线索。但是，对话中的参与者依赖什么信息呢？该项目通过研究说话者轮流说话的速度的自然变化，以及通过测量旁观者在观看两个人说话的视频时的眼球运动，来研究儿童和成人如何“准时”轮流说话。这个项目将调查参与者预测一个回合结束的能力在多大程度上依赖于日常讲话中的单词与语调和节奏（韵律）。单词提供了关于内容的信息，也提供了关于即将到来的演讲的结构的信息。韵律是一个连续的线索，如何一个短语的结构，也涉及到在许多情况下的话。由于幼儿擅长区分某些韵律模式，但对单词或句法还不太了解，我们假设他们对线索的使用与成人不同。 这个项目将研究自然对话中的话轮转换，以确定这种会话技能的发展路径。对话是分析与其他社会存在互动的门户。对孩子来说，对话是学习语言和世界的一种方式。成年人的一些琐碎技能，比如知道什么时候进来，如何问相关的问题，需要孩子们多年的时间来培养。了解儿童如何发展这些技能也应该有助于了解他们如何获得周围的信息。