Conversation electrified: ERP correlates of speech act recognition in underspecified utterances

PloS One
Rosa S GisladottirStephen C Levinson

Abstract

The ability to recognize speech acts (verbal actions) in conversation is critical for everyday interaction. However, utterances are often underspecified for the speech act they perform, requiring listeners to rely on the context to recognize the action. The goal of this study was to investigate the time-course of auditory speech act recognition in action-underspecified utterances and explore how sequential context (the prior action) impacts this process. We hypothesized that speech acts are recognized early in the utterance to allow for quick transitions between turns in conversation. Event-related potentials (ERPs) were recorded while participants listened to spoken dialogues and performed an action categorization task. The dialogues contained target utterances that each of which could deliver three distinct speech acts depending on the prior turn. The targets were identical across conditions, but differed in the type of speech act performed and how it fit into the larger action sequence. The ERP results show an early effect of action type, reflected by frontal positivities as early as 200 ms after target utterance onset. This indicates that speech act recognition begins early in the turn when the utterance has only been parti...Continue Reading

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Citations

Dec 15, 2015·Trends in Cognitive Sciences·Stephen C Levinson
Apr 14, 2016·Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological Sciences·Hanne De JaegherMelisa Stevanovic
Jul 1, 2015·Frontiers in Psychology·Stephen C Levinson, Francisco Torreira
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Feb 23, 2018·Frontiers in Human Neuroscience·Rosa S GisladottirStephen C Levinson
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Aug 1, 2021·Neuroscience·G L Licea-HaquetM Giordano
Aug 28, 2021·Brain Sciences·Naomi NotaJudith Holler

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