Brain power

New open access book on turn-taking in human communicative interaction

Verbal communication is a fundamental aspect of knowledge transfer, but how much do you know about the complexities of human communicative interaction? How do people manage to have a conversation with such rapid speed and accuracy?

Researchers in the Language and Cognition department of the Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics have edited the freely accessible e-book Turn-taking in Human Communicative Interaction1 dedicated to the complex multitasking we perform while in conversation:

Across the globe, at this very moment, millions of people are doing the same thing: having a conversation. This most basic use of language is in fact a marvelous achievement. Consider this: the amount of time between turns when talking in conversation averages around a mere 200 milliseconds, yet psycholinguistic research has shown that speakers need at least 600 milliseconds to plan a single word, and far more time for a complex sentence. It follows that the next speaker in line cannot wait for the current turn to end to start planning a response.

The articles in the collection were published individually last year in the journal Frontiers in Psychology. Included are contributions from psycholinguists, developmental language researchers, conversation analysts, linguists, sign language researchers, phoneticians, corpus analysts, and comparative ethologists.

Reference:

  1. Holler, J., Kendrick, K, H., Casillas, M., Levinson, S. C., eds. (2016). Turn-Taking in Human Communicative Interaction. Lausanne: Frontiers Media. doi: 10.3389/978-2-88919-825-2

Also published on Medium.

Bruce Boyes

Bruce Boyes is a knowledge management (KM), environmental management, and education thought leader with more than 40 years of experience. As editor and lead writer of the award-winning RealKM Magazine, he has personally written more than 500 articles and published more than 2,000 articles overall, resulting in more than 2 million reader views. With a demonstrated ability to identify and implement innovative solutions to social and ecological complexity, Bruce has successfully completed more than 40 programs, projects, and initiatives including leading complex major programs. His many other career highlights include: leading the KM community KM and Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) initiative, using agile approaches to oversee the on time and under budget implementation of an award-winning $77.4 million recovery program for one of Australia's most iconic river systems, leading a knowledge strategy process for Australia’s 56 natural resource management (NRM) regional organisations, pioneering collaborative learning and governance approaches to empower communities to sustainably manage landscapes and catchments in the face of complexity, being one of the first to join a new landmark aviation complexity initiative, initiating and teaching two new knowledge management subjects at Shanxi University in China, and writing numerous notable environmental strategies, reports, and other works. Bruce is currently a PhD candidate in the Knowledge, Technology and Innovation Group at Wageningen University and Research, and holds a Master of Environmental Management with Distinction and a Certificate of Technology (Electronics). As well as his work for RealKM Magazine, Bruce currently also teaches in the Beijing Foreign Studies University (BFSU) Certified High-school Pathway (CHP) program in Baotou, Inner Mongolia, China.

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