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This research shows that AI-based conversational interfaces can have a profound impact on consumer–brand relationships. We develop a conceptual model of verbal embodiment in technology-mediated communication that integrates three key properties of human-to-human dialogue—(1) turn-taking (i.e. alternating contributions by the two parties), (2) turn initiation (i.e. the act of initiating the next turn in a sequence), and (3) grounding between turns (i.e. acknowledging the other party's contribution by restating or rephrasing it). These fundamental conversational properties systematically shape consumers' perception of an AI-based conversational interface, their perception of the brand that the interface represents, and their behavior in connection with that brand. Converging evidence from four studies shows that these dialogue properties enhance the perceived humanness of the interface, which in turn promotes more intimate consumer–brand relationships and more favorable behavioral brand outcomes (greater recommendation acceptance, willingness to pay a price premium, brand advocacy, and brand loyalty). Moreover, we show that these effects are reduced in contexts requiring less mutual understanding between the consumer and the brand. This research highlights how fundamental principles of human-to-human communication can be harnessed to design more intimate consumer–brand interactions in an increasingly AI-driven marketplace. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents an exploration of turn-taking strategies and their reflection of the politeness principle in interview programs. Conversations, while appearing effortless, require coordination of multiple cognitive processes, including turn-taking. Turn-taking, an integral part of any multi-party conversation, can be impolite when inappropriate. Drawing from previous research on turn-taking and the prisoner's dilemma, this study examines the strategies employed by guests and hosts in reality talk shows, particularly focusing on how these strategies reflect the Politeness Principle. This research analyzes the specific turn-taking strategies and their politeness implications. The findings contribute to a deeper understanding of turn-taking in interview settings and their significance in maintaining politeness and effective communication. This study offers insights for future research on conversational strategies and their role in interpersonal communication. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Turn-taking in everyday conversation is fast, with median latencies in corpora of conversational speech often reported to be under 300 ms. This seems like magic, given that experimental research on speech planning has shown that speakers need much more time to plan and produce even the shortest of utterances. This paper reviews how language scientists have combined linguistic analyses of conversations and experimental work to understand the skill of swift turn-taking and proposes a tentative solution to the riddle of fast turn-taking. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article presents the results of an exploratory study on the timing of turn-taking in face-to-face dialogue interpreting based on a corpus of interpreted interactions that were recorded with mobile eye-trackers. Our aims were to: (1) investigate the timing of interpreters' turns in dialogic interaction; and (2) identify features that have an impact on interpreters' turn-taking speed. These include input processing factors (including turn type and turn duration) and gaze, which have been shown to play an important role in turn-taking. The analysis shows that, although interpreters in our study tend to orient to the maxim 'one speaker at a time', turn transitions between the primary speaker and the interpreter contain more gaps and longer overlaps than have been found for same-language interactions. It also shows that the type of turn produced by the primary speaker (question vs. non-question), the primary speaker's speech rate, and, to a certain extent, turn duration affect the interpreter's turn-taking speed. Thus, the present study contributes to a better understanding of the processes that impact the timing of turn-taking in face-to-face dialogue interpreting. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Fluent conversation requires temporal organization between conversational exchanges. By performing a systematic review and Bayesian multi‐level meta‐analysis, we map the trajectory of infants' turn‐taking abilities over the course of early development (0 to 70 months). We synthesize the evidence from 26 studies (78 estimates from 429 unique infants, of which at least 152 are female) reporting response latencies in infant–adult dyadic interactions. The data were collected between 1975 and 2019, exclusively in North America and Europe. Infants took on average circa 1 s to respond, and the evidence of changes in response over time was inconclusive. Infants' response latencies are related to those of their adult conversational partners: an increase of 1 s in adult response latency (e.g., 400 to 1400 ms) would be related to an increase of over 1 s in infant response latency (from 600 to 1857 ms). These results highlight the dynamic reciprocity involved in the temporal organization of turn‐taking. Based on these results, we provide recommendations for future avenues of enquiry: studies should analyze how turn‐by‐turn exchanges develop on a longitudinal timescale, with rich assessment of infants' linguistic and social development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

According to research in pragmatics, gender represents an important factor in individuals' turn-taking behaviour, with results indicating overall male-dominated conversational patterns. Despite the significance of gender in the students' conversational styles in an academic setting, gender and turn-taking has yet to be investigated in the foreign language classroom. Therefore, the present case-study investigates gender as performed in turn-taking organisation in the Spanish language classroom with the focus on floor management, linguistic means of expressing conversational styles, and content of the interaction in its relation to gender. Qualitative conversation analysis of 9 pair interactions of students conducting a problem-solving task in a foreign language (Spanish) overall support the hypothesis of gender-related differences in conversational styles – a pattern previously established in a native-language environment. Specifically, the main differentiation of interlocutor-oriented collaborative female vs. self-oriented competitive male style was found in the content-level patterns. Moreover, the findings of the study provide additional evidence for the argument of gender being shaped and constructed in society, as well as reflection of gender stereotypes in the content of the message conveyed by the individuals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It is argued in this paper that a multimodal analysis of turn-taking, one of the core areas of conversation analytic research, is needed and has to integrate gaze as one of the most central resources for allocating turns, and that new technologies are available that can provide a solid and reliable empirical foundation for this analysis. On the basis of eye-tracking data of spontaneous conversations, it is shown that gaze is the most ubiquitous next-speaker-selection technique. It can function alone or enhance other techniques. I also discuss the interrelationship between the strength for sequential projection and the choice of next-speaker-selection techniques by a current speaker. The appropriate consideration of gaze leads to a revision of the turn-taking model in that it reduces the domain of self-selection and expands that of the current-speaker-selects-next sub-rule. It also has consequences for the analysis of "simultaneous starts". [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Children acquire language embedded within the rich social context of interaction. This paper reports on a longitudinal study investigating the developmental relationship between conversational turn‐taking and vocabulary growth in English‐acquiring children (N = 122) followed between 9 and 24 months. Daylong audio recordings obtained every 3 months provided several indices of the language environment, including the number of adult words children heard in their environment and their number of conversational turns. Vocabulary was measured independently via parental report. Growth curve analyses revealed a bidirectional relationship between conversational turns and vocabulary growth, controlling for the amount of words in children's environments. The results are consistent with theoretical approaches that identify social interaction as a core component of early language acquisition. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Turn-taking is the prominent feature of dyadic conversation. It is termed as an interchanging of utterance sequences between two or more speakers. Many a time, this turn-taking does not take place smoothly as it involves simultaneous speech namely interruption and overlap. Interruption is an indispensable aspect of conversational behavior. Therefore, it cannot be relegated as a rude and disaffiliative act harming the flow of conversation. Like interruption, overlap too is the essential ingredient of interaction as it helps enhancing conversation at hand. In short, our interaction itself necessitates interruption and overlap. The present paper aims at defining interaction and overlap in the line of their function, types, and differences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study examined whether discourse-marker use changes in nurse–patient interactions as a function of nurses using their first (L1) or second (L2) language. Discourse markers were analyzed as turn-maintenance markers that indicate acknowledgement and discourse-shift markers that signal shifts of a topic or speaker in the conversation. These two categories differ in terms of degree of discourse management and interactional control. Sixteen nurses conducted a pain-assessment interview with a patient native speaker of English and with a patient native speaker of French, where the nurses used their own L1 in one case and their own weaker L2 in the other. The first hypothesis, that nurses would generally use discourse markers more frequently in the L1 than in the L2, was not supported. The second hypothesis, that nurses would use discourse-shift markers less frequently in their L2 compared to the L1, relative to their (baseline) use of turn-maintenance markers, was supported. The findings, especially the support for the second hypothesis, could have implications for the development of L2 training for health practitioners. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Stuttering is a communication disorder which is characterized by intermittent and involuntary speech disruptions. It afflicts around 1% of the population. Reappraisal of scientific literature indicates that examination of turn-taking behaviors during conversations in those who stutter has emerged as an interesting area among the speech-language clinicians, and linguists. The objective of this paper is to conduct a systematic examination of the research works carried on turn-taking behaviors during conversations in the field of stuttering disorder since 1985. This was conducted using the PRISMA guidelines. PubMed, Google Scholar, and other bibliographical references were scrutinized for locating relevant research articles (or, items) on the topic under consideration. Keywords containing such as "Turn-Taking", AND/OR "Conversation Analysis" were entered in the search engine tabs. The PubMed database generated a total of 31 items. An additional list of 41 items was located using the Google Scholar, and other bibliographical sources. Out of these 72 items, only 22 of them were considered based on the inclusion and exclusion criteria of the current study. The search was conducted between 01/07/2019 to 20/08/2019. The selected research articles were, then, discussed according to the turn-taking behaviors (i.e. verbal, and nonverbal behaviors), and recruitment of target participants (i.e. Children Who Stutter-CWS, and Adults Who Stutter-AWS) followed up in those studies. To sum up, the significance of conducting systematic examination stemmed from the realization that a successful application of turntaking mechanism during conversation allows an uninterrupted flow of meaningful information between a speaker, and a listener at regular intervals. However, in the case of those who stutter, any level of social interaction is difficult because of the interference of speech impediment while speaking with others. This restricts their participation in the interacting process. Systematic production of research work with adults is necessary to understand the cause of communication breakdown in natural settings among AWS. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper offers an analysis of the Ford-Kavanaugh hearing by the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee, with particular attention to the role of the Committee chairperson within this procedural infrastructure—an infrastructure that, we argue, systematically provides for and thereby implicitly legitimizes the insertion of bias in its proceedings, while nonetheless orienting to an ideology of fairness based on time limits for speaking. Focusing on the linguistic and interactional mechanisms through which chairpersons may use the 'interstitial spaces' that emerge within such hearings, we conclude that the structural privileges afforded to partisan chairpersons can compromise the Committee's ability to reach impartial and unbiased conclusions in its investigations, and we offer recommendations with regard to how this might be resolved. • 'Interstitial spaces' can emerge between phases in Committee hearings. • Committee chairpersons can make use of these spaces to insert partisan perspectives. • There are linguistic and interactional mechanisms that chairpersons can deploy to monopolize use of interstitial spaces. • Impartiality (in terms of equal time limits for speaking) is undermined by such interstitially-produced commentaries. • Committee members should learn to combat these practices if the role of chairperson is to be filled by the Majority Leader. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The study of human language is progressively moving toward comparative and interactive frameworks, extending the concept of turn‐taking to animal communication. While such an endeavor will help us understand the interactive origins of language, any theoretical account for cross‐species turn‐taking should consider three key points. First, animal turn‐taking must incorporate biological studies on animal chorusing, namely how different species coordinate their signals over time. Second, while concepts employed in human communication and turn‐taking, such as intentionality, are still debated in animal behavior, lower level mechanisms with clear neurobiological bases can explain much of animal interactive behavior. Third, social behavior, interactivity, and cooperation can be orthogonal, and the alternation of animal signals need not be cooperative. Considering turn‐taking a subset of chorusing in the rhythmic dimension may avoid overinterpretation and enhance the comparability of future empirical work. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this study, we define and test measures that capture aspects of collaboration in interaction within groups of three participants performing a task. The measures are constructed upon turn-taking and lexical features from a corpus of triadic task-based interactions, as well as upon demographic features, and personality, dominance, and satisfaction assessments related to the corpus participants. Those quantities were tested for significant effects and correlations they have with each other. The findings indicate that determinants of collaboration are located in measures quantifying the differences among dialogue participants in conversational mechanisms employed, such as number and frequency of words contributed, lexical repetitions, conversational dominance, and in psychological and sentiment variables, i.e., the participants' personality traits and expression of satisfaction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper aims at investigating the impact of turn-taking technique in consecutive interpreting and to what extent teaching such technique improves on students' performance. Teaching this type of interpreting requires certain strategies and techniques to overcome the difficulties that students may face in interpreting task. Most of the interpreting students face many problems as they interpret consecutively because this type of communication requires unique skills and knowledge in order to perform this task successfully. Turn-taking is a core and specific spoken discourse characteristic that can be observed, described and analyzed in interpreting. Turn-taking is considered as unique and complex features that actively include the interpreter in determining, managing compelling and guiding the flow of the talk. Moreover, in turn-taking interpreters make decisions to manage and arrange turns due to and because of the surface linguistic meanings and social meanings vital in the situation and its expectations. This technique supports the students' memory by decreasing the cognitive load when the students take the turns as they interpret and increase their self-confidence. Forty students from Department of Translation/College of Arts / University of Tikrit have used as participants in this study. A ten- closed items questionnaire has been distributed to the participants to see their perspectives on this technique in such consecutive interpreting. The analysis of their responses to the questionnaire's items refers to their tendency to adopt such technique in performing such task. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Conversation is the natural setting for language learning and use, and a key property of conversation is the smooth taking of turns. In adult conversations, delays between turns are minimal (typically 200 ms or less) because listeners display a striking ability to predict what their partner will say, and they formulate a response before their partner's turn ends. Here, we tested how this ability to coordinate comprehension and production develops in preschool children. In an interactive paradigm, 106 children (ages 3–5 years) and 48 adults responded to questions that varied in predictability but were controlled for linguistic complexity. Using a novel distributional approach to data analysis, we found that when children can predict a question's ending, they leave shorter gaps before responding, suggesting that they can optimize the timing of their conversational turns like adults do. In line with a recent ethological theory of turn taking, this early competency helps explain how conversational contexts support language development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates the benefits of incorporating full-duplex (FD) into an underlaid device-to-device (D2D) cellular network via centralized and distributed power control mechanisms. In the considered system, D2D users operate in an FD mode under the adverse effect of realistic residual self-interference, and their locations are modeled by a homogeneous spatial Poisson point process. By first considering a centralized power control scheme, we first formulate an optimization problem that maximizes the D2D link sum-rate under the constraint on minimum target signal-to-interference-plus-noise ratio (SINR) at each user. Since the problem is nonconvex, we propose a difference of convex based method to transform the problem into a sequence of convex subproblems which can be solved efficiently. The obtained solutions help to calculate the coverage probability of both cellular and D2D links, showing that a very high coverage probability of cellular link can be achieved while successfully supporting a large number of active D2D links. In the second part of the paper, we consider a distributed power control scheme where only the local channel state information of direct link between respective D2D users is needed. By utilizing the tools of stochastic geometry, we derive closed-form approximations of coverage probabilities for both cellular and D2D links. Specifically, we apply Laplace transforms and novel approximations that accurately approximate the expected values of fractional and exponential functions of random variables to obtain the distribution functions of SINRs at the base-station and D2D users in a closed form. By further taking the average over the distributions of cellular and D2D link distances, we then arrive at the closed-form approximations of cellular and D2D coverage probabilities. In addition, based on the approximation of D2D link coverage probability, an analytical expression for the D2D link sum-rate is also obtained, and it can be effectively calculated. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Gesturing from one human to another appears to span all cultural boundaries; one could possibly call it a universal means of communication. Group work studies have shown that gesturing makes up over 35 percent of all interactions. Participants use hand gestures to enact ideas, to focus the attention of the group, to signal turn-taking, and to reference objects on the work surface. Specifically, this paper explores gesturing as applied to users of group support systems. We address practical issues such as: at what level of interaction might gesturing be supported, how large and what shape should gesture pointers be, how they should move, network and processor throughput requirements, and group size effects. Our results show that while full motion computer gesturing can be supported on PC-LAN systems for small groups, gesturing for medium and large groups requires the use of special techniques such as regulating transmission rates, motion smoothing, and point and quiver cursors. These techniques could also be applied to wide area network implementations to reduce network traffic and latency problems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Aim: Studies of children's early ability to communicate have mainly focused on mother-child dyads. That is why this study analysed the long-term effects of triadic interactions involving both parents.Method: This prospective pilot study monitored child-mother-father communication in 19 families from the general population in Sweden using the standardised Lausanne Trilogue Play method in a video studio. The families and their first-born child were initially followed from three months to 48 months of age. Preschool teachers assessed the children at the age of four using the Preschool Behaviour Questionnaire and then their teachers assessed the subjects at the age of 15 using the Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire. Early communication was analysed in relation to the children's social competence at the age of 15.Results: The child's skills in initiating turn-taking sequences and their parents' responses to this correlated with the child's social competence at the age of four, as reported in a previous study from our group, and at the age of 15, as reported here.Conclusion: The results of this study indicated that stimulating children's capacity to initiate turn-taking sequences in infancy improved their social competence at the age of 15, confirming positive results at four years of age. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Turn-taking is a process which enables interlocutors to decide who the next speaker is in a conversation. This study aims to identify thefactors that affect turn-taking in conversations and state the factors that influence turn-taking such as gender, power, and the differences between overlapping and interrupting, and gap and pause. It observes thesefactors in Tennessee Williams's The Glass Menagerie. The study is of significance because it integrates linguistic discourse analysis with literature by analyzing a literary text. The conclusion shows how turn-taking serves to understand a literary work by employing the rate of overlapping and the effect of power to determine the points of strong conversations and strong events in a literary work and therefore determine the introduction, climax, and the end. Moreover, more overlapping entails less organization in turn-taking which will undoubtedly affect the progress of the story orflow of events in a literary work. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract Much of human learning emerges as a result of interaction with others. Yet, this interpersonal process has been poorly characterized from a neurophysiological perspective. This study investigated (i) whether Interpersonal Brain Synchronization (IBS) can reliably mark social interactive learning, and specifically (ii) during what kind of interactive behavior. We recorded brain activity from learner-instructor dyads using functional Near-Infrared Spectroscopy (fNIRS) during the acquisition of a music song. We made four fundamental observations. First, during the interactive learning task, brain activity recorded from the bilateral Inferior Frontal Cortex (IFC) synchronized across the learner and the instructor. Second, such IBS was observed in particular when the learner was observing the instructor's vocal behavior and when the learning experience entailed a turn-taking and more active mode of interaction. Third, this specific enhancement of IBS predicted learner's behavioral performance. Fourth, Granger causality analyses further disclosed that the signal recorded from the instructor's brain better predicted that recorded from the learner's brain than vice versa. Together, these results indicate that social interactive learning can be neurophysiologically characterized in terms of IBS. Furthermore, they suggest that the learner's involvement in the learning experience, alongside the instructor's modeling, are key factors driving the alignment of neural processes across learner and instructor. Such alignment impacts upon the real-time acquisition of new information and eventually upon the learning (behavioral) performance. Hence, besides providing a biological characterization of social interactive learning, our results hold relevance for clinical and pedagogical practices. Highlights • fNIRS hyperscanning is performed during social interactive learning. • Interpersonal brain synchronization (IBS) of IFC increases during learning. • IBS is affected by the learners' involvement. • IBS correlates with learners' performance. • IBS may function as a neural alignment across learner and instructor. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Most children can naturally engage in play and by this, develop skills while interacting with their peers and toys. However, children with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) often show impairments in play skills which result in limited opportunities for interaction with others and the learning of social skills. In this regard, robotic devices/toys that can provide simple and attractive indications are advantageous to engage children with ASD in play activities that require social and interaction skills. This project proposes a new interaction method using paired robotic devices called COLOLO to facilitate a fundamental exchange of intention in communication so-called turn-taking. These tangible devices are designed to sense the user's manipulation, send a message to the paired device, and display visual cues for assisting children to achieve turn-taking through play. On the sessions with COLOLO there are two devices, one held by the therapist and one by the child, and they take turns to manipulate the toys and change their colors. In this article, two experimental conditions or interaction rules: the "two-sided lighting rule" and the "one-sided lighting rule" were introduced. The two interactions rules differ from each on the way the devices used the visual cues to indicate the turn-holder. The effect of each interaction rule on children's turn-taking behaviors was investigated through an experimental study with four children with ASD. From the results, we found that with the one-sided lighting rule participants tended to shift their gaze more and to decrease the failed attempts of turn-taking. The discussion covers the possibilities of using paired devices to describe participants' behaviors related to turn-taking quantitatively. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The home of human language use is face-to-face interaction, a context in which communicative exchanges are characterised not only by bodily signals accompanying what is being said but also by a pattern of alternating turns at talk. This transition between turns is astonishingly fast—typically a mere 200-ms elapse between a current and a next speaker’s contribution—meaning that comprehending, producing, and coordinating conversational contributions in time is a significant challenge. This begs the question of whether the additional information carried by bodily signals facilitates or hinders language processing in this time-pressured environment. We present analyses of multimodal conversations revealing that bodily signals appear to profoundly influence language processing in interaction: Questions accompanied by gestures lead to shorter turn transition times—that is, to faster responses—than questions without gestures, and responses come earlier when gestures end before compared to after the question turn has ended. These findings hold even after taking into account prosodic patterns and other visual signals, such as gaze. The empirical findings presented here provide a first glimpse of the role of the body in the psycholinguistic processes underpinning human communication. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Communicative exchanges consist of both static and dynamic structures that can be used for prediction. Temporal dynamics are often neglected in communication studies. We used Shannon's mathematical theory of communication to examine 1,594,690 contributions from 206,184 contributors to 38 open online collaborations. We found that about three-fourths of the total predictability of turn-taking stemmed from participation frequencies (static variance), while one-fourth originated from the temporal sequence (dynamic process). Most dynamic structure is contained within consecutive dyads. We found a trade-off in the importance of static and dynamic structures, and also found that static structure was predicted more strongly in a stationary process and dynamic structure in a nonstationary process. We offer a combination of both theoretical and empirical factors to explain these findings. These findings have implications both for theorizing and methodologically measuring communication as a dynamic process, as well as for the practical design of online collaboration systems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Highlights • Teachers can build on learner utterances using post-expansion sequences. • Teachers can invite audience questions by repeatedly asking "any/no questions?" • Audience questions can be invited by nominating students or seeking eye-contact. • By using continuers teachers can encourage presenters to elaborate on their answers. Abstract Although discussions after student presentations play an important role in higher education seminars, relatively little attention has been paid to the ways in which the presenters, teachers and audience members actually interact. Building on a data set consisting of 12 videotaped follow-up discussions collected in an undergraduate English as a foreign language (EFL) seminar, this conversation-analytic study focuses on teacher practices and shows how teachers can build on previous student utterances to improve the clarity or accuracy of the discussion, or how they can create space for audience participation by inviting audience questions. The study also describes how teachers can encourage the presenters to elaborate on their answers. The findings contribute to the body of research on seminar talk by describing teacher practices utilized during discussions after student presentations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper contributes to the growing line of research that takes a multimodal approach in the study of interpreter-mediated dialogues. Drawing on insights from Conversation Analysis and multimodal analysis, we investigate how extended multi-unit turns unfold with interventions of an interpreter and, more specifically, what is the role of gaze in this process. The analysis is based on videos of interpreter-mediated dialogues (Dutch-Russian) recorded with mobile eye-tracking glasses. We argue that the interpreter's gaze direction contributes both to the local management of turn-taking (next-speaker selection) and to sequence organization. More specifically, we show how interpreter's gaze orientation bears on the negotiation of possible transition relevance places and how it contributes to the smooth continuation of the projected extended multi-unit turn. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper discusses two phenomena of gaze-based micro-interaction in turn-taking. The two patterns illustrate the relevance of gaze for turn-taking in triadic interactions, as they show how speakers can allocate turns by their gaze. Based on the finding that a speaker can select the next speaker by gazing at her at the end of a turn (cf. Auer, 2017), the study shows how these gaze-selected next speakers can avoid taking the offered turn. I argue that the two different gaze patterns presented here have different interactional functions: a speaker who is gaze-selected by the previous speaker can either pass on the turn to a third participant by gazing at her, or she can reject the offered turn by ‘gazing away’ and dissolving the mutual gaze, and thus opening up the conversational floor for the other participant to self-select. The results show that all three participants orient themselves towards gaze in the organization of turn-taking, and that gaze as a turn-allocation technique serves to achieve a turn-transition between speakers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Language, humans' most distinctive trait, still remains a 'mystery' for evolutionary theory. It is underpinned by a universal infrastructure--cooperative turn-taking--which has been suggested as an ancient mechanism bridging the existing gap between the articulate human species and their inarticulate primate cousins. However, we know remarkably little about turn-taking systems of non-human animals, and methodological confounds have often prevented meaningful cross-species comparisons. Thus, the extent to which cooperative turn-taking is uniquely human or represents a homologous and/or analogous trait is currently unknown. The present paper draws attention to this promising research avenue by providing an overviewof the state of the art of turn-taking in four animal taxa--birds,mammals, insects and anurans. It concludes with a new comparative framework to spur more research into this research domain and to test which elements of the human turn-taking system are shared across species and taxa. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

During conversation, there is often little gap between interlocutors' utterances. In two pairs of experiments, we manipulated the content predictability of yes/no questions to investigate whether listeners achieve such coordination by (i) preparing a response as early as possible or (ii) predicting the end of the speaker's turn. To assess these two mechanisms, we varied the participants' task: They either pressed a button when they thought the question was about to end (Experiments 1a and 2a), or verbally answered the questions with either yes or no (Experiments 1b and 2b). Predictability effects were present when participants had to prepare a verbal response, but not when they had to predict the turn-end. These findings suggest content prediction facilitates turn-taking because it allows listeners to prepare their own response early, rather than because it helps them predict when the speaker will reach the end of their turn. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Collaborative music live coding (CMLC) approaches the music improvisation practice of live coding in collaboration. In network music, co-located and remote interactions are possible, and communication is typically supported by the use of a chat window. However, paying attention to simultaneous multi-user actions, such as chat texts and code, can be demanding to follow. In this paper we explore co-located and remote CMLC using the live coding environment and pedagogical tool EarSketch. In particular, we examine the mechanism of turn-taking and the use of a small set of semantic hashtags in online chatting by using an autoethnographic approach of duo and trio live coding. This approach is inspired by (1) the practice of pair programming, a team-based strategy to efficiently solving computational problems; (2) the language used in short messaging service (SMS) texting and social media. The results from an online survey with six practitioners in live coding and collaboration complements the autoethnographic findings and point to education as the most suitable domain for this approach to CMLC. We conclude discussing the challenges and opportunities of turn-taking and the use of semantic hashtags focusing on educational settings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

During conversation, interlocutors rapidly switch between speaker and listener roles and take turns at talk. How do they achieve such fine coordination? Most research has concentrated on the role of prediction, but listeners must also prepare a response in advance (assuming they wish to respond) and articulate this response at the appropriate moment. Such mechanisms may overlap with the processes of comprehending the speaker’s incoming turn and predicting its end. However, little is known about the stages of response preparation and production. We discuss three questions pertaining to such stages: (1) Do listeners prepare their own response in advance?, (2) Can listeners buffer their prepared response?, and (3) Does buffering lead to interference with concurrent comprehension? We argue that fine coordination requires more than just an accurate prediction of the interlocutor’s incoming turn: Listeners must also simultaneously prepare their own response. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

During conversations, we engage in turn-taking behaviour that proceeds back and forth effortlessly as we communicate. In any given day, we participate in numerous face-to-face interactions that contain social cues from our partner and we interpret these cues to rapidly identify whether it is appropriate to speak. Although the benefit provided by visual cues has been well established in several areas of communication, the use of visual information to make turn-taking decisions during conversation is unclear. Here we conducted two experiments to investigate the role of visual information in identifying conversational turn exchanges. We presented clips containing single utterances spoken by single individuals engaged in a natural conversation with another. These utterances were from either right before a turn exchange (i.e., when the current talker would finish and the other would begin) or were utterances where the same talker would continue speaking. In Experiment 1, participants were presented audiovisual, auditory-only and visual-only versions of our stimuli and identified whether a turn exchange would occur or not. We demonstrated that although participants could identify turn exchanges with unimodal information alone, they performed best in the audiovisual modality. In Experiment 2, we presented participants audiovisual turn exchanges where the talker, the listener or both were visible. We showed that participants suffered a cost at identifying turns exchanges when visual cues from the listener were not available. Overall, we demonstrate that although auditory information is sufficient for successful conversation, visual information plays an important role in the overall efficiency of communication. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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Interacting with a social robot should give people a better understanding of the robot's actions and intentions. In terms of human-human interaction (HHI), people can interpret actions of others in an effortless way. However, it is still unclear whether people can do the same with humanoid robots. Imitation (of the robot's actions) provides us with an intuitive means for solving this puzzle, because it is closely related to interpreting another's actions. In the study of human imitation, the theory of goal-directed imitation holds that the imitator tends to imitate the action goals whenever the action goals are salient, otherwise people tend to imitate the action means. We investigated this theory for human robot interaction by manipulating the presence and absence of the goal object when people imitate the robot's pointing gestures. The results showed that the presence of a goal object reduces people's goal errors. Moreover, we found that most people tend to match their action means rather than the goals of the robot's action. To ensure that participants considered the robot as a social agent, we designed a natural interaction task where the turn-taking cue was included: we let the robot look at the human after completing the pointing gesture at varying latencies. As expected, we found that the earlier the robot gazes at people, the shorter the reaction time of people was to start to imitate. Our results show that people are responsive to a robot's social gaze cues, and that they are responsive to the action goals of robots, although not as much as in HHI. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the quest to bridge the gulf between the fields of linguistics and animal communication, interest has recently been drawn to turn-taking behavior in social interaction. Vocal turn-taking is the core form of language usage in humans, and has been examined in numerous species of birds and primates. Recent studies on great apes have shown that they engage in a bodily form, gestural turn-taking, to achieve mutual communicative goals. However, most studies on turn-taking neglected the fact that signals are prevalently perceived and produced in a multimodal format. Here, I propose that research on animal communication may benefit a more holistic and dynamic approach: studying turn-taking using a multimodal, conservation-analytic framework. I will discuss recent comparative research that implemented this approach via a specific set of parameters. In sum, I argue that a conversation-analytic framework might help substantially to pinpoint the ways in which crucial components of language are embodied in the ‘human interaction engine’. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Human conversations are organized according to operative sequential features with different components of utterances being related to each other forming so-called adjacency pairings. An adjacency pair is a sequential structure produced by both speakers, consisting of two parts, with the second part being contingent upon and normatively obliged to the first part, such as greeting-greeting exchanges. The present paper investigates such ordered serial utterances in chimpanzee greeting interactions. Results show that reciprocal and structured communicative ‘discourse’ is relatable to the communicative modality that is chosen for greetings as well as to the social bonding between the greeting interactants. The findings of the present study are discussed in relation to the social complexity hypothesis and the current debate on the importance of the turn-taking system for language evolution. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The future of Open Distributed Processing systems (ODP) will see an increasing of components number, these components are sharing resources. In general, these resources are offering some kind of services. Due to the huge number of components, it is very difficult to offer the optimum Quality of service (QoS). This encourages us to develop a model for QoS negotiation process to optimize the QoS in an ODP system. In such system, there is a High risk of software or hardware failure. To ensure good performance of a system based on our model, we develop it using a formal method. In our case, we will use Event-B to get in the end of our development a system correct by construction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study investigates whether there is a universal tendency for content interrogative words ( wh-words ) within a language to sound similar in order to facilitate pragmatic inference in conversation. Gaps between turns in conversation are very short, meaning that listeners must begin planning their turn as soon as possible. While previous research has shown that paralinguistic features such as prosody and eye gaze provide cues to the pragmatic function of upcoming turns, we hypothesise that a systematic phonetic cue that marks interrogative words would also help early recognition of questions (allowing early preparation of answers), for instance wh-words sounding similar within a language. We analysed 226 languages from 66 different language families by means of permutation tests. We found that initial segments of wh-words were more similar within a language than between languages, also when controlling for language family, geographic area (stratified permutation) and analyzability (compound phrases excluded). Random samples tests revealed that initial segments of wh-words were more similar than initial segments of randomly selected word sets and conceptually related word sets (e.g., body parts, actions, pronouns). Finally, we hypothesised that this cue would be more useful at the beginning of a turn, so the similarity of the initial segment of wh-words should be greater in languages that place them at the beginning of a clause. We gathered typological data on 110 languages, and found the predicted trend, although statistical significance was not attained. While there may be several mechanisms that bring about this pattern (e.g., common derivation), we suggest that the ultimate explanation of the similarity of interrogative words is to facilitate early speech-act recognition. Importantly, this hypothesis can be tested empirically, and the current results provide a sound basis for future experimental tests. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Global biodiversity conservation has recently focused on the roles of land management strategies of land sharing vs. land sparing. However, few studies have evaluated the roles of social and ecological interactions in modifying the effectiveness of land management for top predator conservation. Using a 65-year dataset from northeastern China, we evaluated the roles of government social policies in resolving human-wildlife conflicts and improving human livelihood. From 1998 to 2015, both big cat populations and their habitats have increased. Concurrently, regional human population density decreased by 59.6%, forest volume logged was reduced by 62.6%. Consequently, increases of key prey species were observed during the same periods. Although populations remained small, the annual finite rate of increase was 1.04 for the Amur tiger population and 1.08 for Amur leopards from 1999 to 2015. Habitat areas occupied by big cats increased significantly. Overexploitation of forest resources and big cat declines under previous unsustainable land use are progressively being reversed under land sparing. Large economic investment and intense human-relocation projects coupled with efforts to reduce poaching and illegal hunting and trapping demonstrate a complex social and ecological synergy in big cat conservation in China. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Free-floating bike sharing (FFBS) is an innovative bike sharing model. FFBS saves on start-up cost, in comparison to station-based bike sharing (SBBS), by avoiding construction of expensive docking stations and kiosk machines. FFBS prevents bike theft and offers significant opportunities for smart management by tracking bikes in real-time with built-in GPS. However, like SBBS, the success of FFBS depends on the efficiency of its rebalancing operations to serve the maximal demand as possible. Bicycle rebalancing refers to the reestablishment of the number of bikes at sites to desired quantities by using a fleet of vehicles transporting the bicycles. Static rebalancing for SBBS is a challenging combinatorial optimization problem. FFBS takes it a step further, with an increase in the scale of the problem. This article is the first effort in a series of studies of FFBS planning and management, tackling static rebalancing with single and multiple vehicles. We present a Novel Mixed Integer Linear Program for solving the Static Complete Rebalancing Problem. The proposed formulation, can not only handle single as well as multiple vehicles, but also allows for multiple visits to a node by the same vehicle. We present a hybrid nested large neighborhood search with variable neighborhood descent algorithm, which is both effective and efficient in solving static complete rebalancing problems for large-scale bike sharing programs. Computational experiments were carried out on the 1 Commodity Pickup and Delivery Traveling Salesman Problem (1-PDTSP) instances used previously in the literature and on three new sets of instances, two (one real-life and one general) based on Share-A-Bull Bikes (SABB) FFBS program recently launched at the Tampa campus of University of South Florida and the other based on Divvy SBBS in Chicago. Computational experiments on the 1-PDTSP instances demonstrate that the proposed algorithm outperforms a tabu search algorithm and is highly competitive with exact algorithms previously reported in the literature for solving static rebalancing problems in SBSS. Computational experiments on the SABB and Divvy instances, demonstrate that the proposed algorithm is able to deal with the increase in scale of the static rebalancing problem pertaining to both FFBS and SBBS, while deriving high-quality solutions in a reasonable amount of CPU time. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although ethical and justice arguments operate in two distinct levels-justice being a more specific concept-they can easily be conflated. A robust justification of ecological justice (justice to nature) requires starting at the roots of justice, rather than merely giving, for example, an argument for why certain non-human beings have moral standing of some kind. Thus, I propose that a theory of ecological justice can benefit from a four-step justification for the inclusion of non-human beings into the community of justice, starting with Hume's circumstances of justice. I will further argue that the resulting theory of ecological justice should be biocentric-meaning that all living beings should be included into the community of justice, as they constitute a 'community of fate'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Input series output independent (ISOI) dc-dc converter systems are suitable for high voltage input and multiple output applications with low voltage rating switches. This paper proposes a novel control strategy consisting of one output voltage regulating (OVR) control loop and n-1 (n is the number of modules in the ISOI system) input voltage sharing (IVS) control loops. An ISOI system with the proposed control strategy can be applied to applications where the output loads of each module are the same. Under these conditions, IVS can be achieved and output voltages copying can be realized in an ISOI system. In this control strategy there is only one controller for each module and the design process of the control loops is simple. Since no central controller is needed in the system, modularity of the system is improved. The operation principle of the new control strategy is introduced and the control effect is simulated. Then the output power and voltage characteristics of an ISOI system under this new control strategy are analyzed. The stability of the proposed control strategy is explored base on a Hurwitz criterion, and the design guide line of the control strategy is given. A two module ISOI system prototype is fabricated and tested in the laboratory. Experimental results verify the effectiveness of the proposed control strategy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Today, the quality of insurance services is the determining factor in the success of a company in a competitive environment. Knowledge sharing will contribute to improving the quality of services in insurance companies. This study examines the impact of knowledge sharing on the quality of insurance services. In terms of the purpose of the study, the method of study is applied and in terms of data collection is descriptive correlation. The population consisted of all employees and corporate clients of group therapy field of Dana insurance company in Mashhad, the sample size is equal to all members of society for all. The measurement tool is a questionnaire, its validity was confirmed, according to experts in the field of management, and reliability is obtained (82.0, 78/0) using Cronbach's alpha coefficient for knowledge sharing and variable quality of insurance services, respectively. The results of structural equation modeling using LISREL software indicates that knowledge sharing does not have significant effect on the quality of insurance services; but aspects of knowledge sharing, including outright transfers, expertise and strategic has positive and significant effect on the quality of insurance services in Dana insurance company in Mashhad. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Turn-taking is a preverbal skill whose mastering constitutes an important precondition for many social interactions and joint actions. However, the cognitive mechanisms supporting turn-taking abilities are still poorly understood. Here, we propose a computational analysis of turn-taking in terms of two general mechanisms supporting joint actions: action prediction (e.g., recognizing the interlocutor's message and predicting the end of turn) and signaling (e.g., modifying one's own speech to make it more predictable and discriminable). We test the hypothesis that in a simulated conversational scenario dyads using these two mechanisms can recognize the utterances of their co-actors faster, which in turn permits them to give and take turns more efficiently. Furthermore, we discuss how turn-taking dynamics depend on the fact that agents cannot simultaneously use their internal models for both action (or messages) prediction and production, as these have different requirements-or, in other words, they cannot speak and listen at the same time with the same level of accuracy. Our results provide a computational-level characterization of turn-taking in terms of cognitive mechanisms of action prediction and signaling that are shared across various interaction and joint action domains. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Two individuals face a regular task that requires the effort of only one. They take turns but sometimes arrange to swap obligations. These swaps account for their changing, private costs. While seemingly primitive, flexible turn-taking is surprisingly efficient, even relative to what can be achieved by mechanisms using monetary transfers. I model and experimentally evaluate a simple form of flexible turn-taking and then present a second form that is both consistent with patterns of subject behavior and approximately second-best in a benchmark case. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Conversational interaction occasionally lapses as topics become exhausted or as participants are left with no obvious thing to talk about next. In this article I look at episodes of ordinary conversation to examine how participants resolve issues of speakership and sequentiality in lapse environments. In particular, I examine one recurrent phenomenon—sequence recompletion—whereby participants bring to completion a sequence of talk that was already treated as complete. Using conversation analysis, I describe four methods for sequence recompletion: turn-exiting, action redoings, delayed replies, and post-sequence transitions. With this practice, participants use verbal and vocal resources to locally manage their participation framework when ending one course of action and potentially starting up a new one. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

By affording interactive communication and natural, human-like conversations, can media tools affect the way we engage with content in human-machine interactions and influence our attitudes toward that content? A between-subjects experiment (N = 172) examined the effects of two communication variables: (a) message-interactivity and (b) conversational tone, in an online health information (Q&A) tool. Findings suggest that informal conversational tone lowers perceptions of relative susceptibility to health risks. Perceived contingency positively mediates the influence of message interactivity on individuals' health attitudes and behavioral intentions whereas perceived interactivity negatively mediates the relationships between these variables. These contrasting mediation effects are further explored via a phantom model analysis that tests two theoretically distinct paths, with implications for both theory and practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]