6. Distribution of gaps and overlaps across speaker transitions.
Negative intervals are classified as “overlaps,” indicating the presence of simultaneous speech on the part of two conversation partners. Positive values are“gaps,” indicating a stretch of silence between turns. The results indicated that the median between-speaker turn interval was +80 ms and was distributed approximately normally. These results are similar to those previously observed in […]
5. The frequency of backchannel words across the corpus
Backchannel words are a foundational element of conversation that occurs at an approximate rate of 1000 per hour of speech; listeners deployed them in nearly two-thirds of speaker turns that were five words or longer.“Generic” continues, such as“uh huh,” may function to signal to speakers that they should keep talking. In contrast,“specific” backchannel words, such […]
4. Behavior patterns of good and bad conversationalists. (AtoF)
The behavioral patterns of good conversationalists (top 25% of partner-rated conversationalist score; depicted in blue) and bad conversationalists (bottom 25%; depicted in red) are depicted. Horizontal axes denote turn-level feature deciles. The y-axis indicates the mean proportion of turns in a category for a good or bad conversationalist. Error bars represent 95% confidence intervals. Top, […]
3. Positive affect is significantly greater after than before a conversation
Each row of density plots corresponds to an age group. Respondents were asked to report their mood immediately before (red) and after (blue) their conversation. Conversation’s effect on people’s mood was positive, significant, and of considerable magnitude
2. A framework for studying conversation
The results are organized according to an analytic framework that distinguishes between three related levels of conversation. Low-level features can be observed directly, vary over short time periods, and often relate to conversational structure (e.g., a pause at the end of a speaker’s turn). Mid-level features are generally inferred indirectly by human perceivers or algorithms […]
1. Topic flow within the CANDOR corpus
The topics people chose to talk about, as measured in CANDOR transcripts by a simple keyword dictionary, reflect the ebb and flow of societal issues in an unusually tumultuous year. COVID-19 (red) surged from unknown to the talk of the nation by mid-2020, matching or even exceeding family-related discussion (blue), a reliable staple of conversation. […]
