Planning versus comprehension in turn-taking: Fast responders show reduced anticipatory processing of the question

Abstract

A B S T R A C TRapid response latencies in conversation suggest that responders start planning before the ongoing turn is finished. Indeed, an earlier EEG study suggests that listeners start planning their responses to questions as soon as they can (Bögels et al., 2015a). The present study aimed to (1) replicate this early planning effect and (2) investigate whether such early response planning incurs a cost on participants' concurrent comprehension of the ongoing turn. During the experiment participants answered questions from a confederate partner. To address aim (1), the questions were designed such that response planning could start either early or late in the turn. Our results largely replicate Bögels et al. (2015a), showing a large positive ERP effect and an oscillatory alpha/beta reduction right after participants could have first started planning their verbal response, again suggesting an early start of response planning. To address aim (2), the confederate's questions also contained either an expected word or an unexpected one to elicit a differential N400 effect, either before or after the start of response planning. We hypothesized an attenuated N400 effect after response planning had started. In contrast, the N400 effects before and after planning did not differ. There was, however, a positive correlation between participants' response time and their N400 effect size after planning had started; quick responders showed a smaller N400 effect, suggesting reduced attention to comprehension and possibly reduced anticipatory processing. We conclude that early response planning can indeed impact comprehension processing.

The power of neural oscillations to inform sentence comprehension: A linguistic perspective

“…These findings are further supported by the results of Bögels et al (), who did not directly manipulate sentence constraint but instead examined how informativeness of a cue in a question asked by an interlocutor modulates ongoing oscillations during linguistic response planning. They found reduced alpha/beta power in response to informative cues compared to non‐informative cues.…”

“…They found reduced alpha/beta power in response to informative cues compared to non-informative cues. It is our opinion that the effect reported in Bögels et al (2018) may be relevant for the current discussion because informative cues enable response planning by constraining the range of possible answers, similarly to how constraining contexts limit the range of possible sentence continuations. This alpha/beta decrease could reflect articulation planning in highly constraining/informative conditions, which is an especially plausible interpretation for the effects observed in Piai et al (2014Piai et al ( , 2015 and Bögels et al (2018) where participants were expected to produce sentence continuations or answer questions respectively.…”

“…It is our opinion that the effect reported in Bögels et al (2018) may be relevant for the current discussion because informative cues enable response planning by constraining the range of possible answers, similarly to how constraining contexts limit the range of possible sentence continuations. This alpha/beta decrease could reflect articulation planning in highly constraining/informative conditions, which is an especially plausible interpretation for the effects observed in Piai et al (2014Piai et al ( , 2015 and Bögels et al (2018) where participants were expected to produce sentence continuations or answer questions respectively. Alternatively, as discussed in Wang et al (2018a) who specifically localized their alpha effect to the language network, alpha suppression in highly constraining contexts TA B L E 6 Summary of studies manipulating predictability; results are presented for the contrast high constraint (HC) versus low constraint (LC) in the pre-target window and unexpected versus expected in the post-target window, unless otherwise specified could reflect more active engagement of the language (rather than the motor) network.…”

Speech Planning at Turn Transitions in Dialog Is Associated With Increased Processing Load

“…Intending to take a well‐timed turn, next, speakers employed a planning strategy that at the same time took them longer to plan their response and was more demanding as compared to delaying response planning. While it remains possible that the choice of processing strategy is a question of preference of individual speakers (Bögels, Casillas, & Levinson, ) or the demands of the dual‐task situation (Lehle & Hübner, ; Reissland & Manzey, ), parallel processing appears to be the standard strategy in dialog.…”

Planning for language production: the electrophysiological signature of attention to the cue to speak

“…Taken together, these two findings suggest that in a conversation, planning for production by the second speaker is already taking place while the first speaker is still talking. Experimental evidence in favour of this idea comes from studies that manipulated when critical information necessary to respond, the cue to the answer, became available, either early in the sentence or late (Barthel, Sauppe, Levinson, & Meyer, 2016;Bögels, Casillas, & Levinson, 2018;Bögels, Magyari, & Levinson, 2015). For instance, compared "Which character, also called 007, appears in the famous movies" to "Which character from the famous movie is also called 007".…”