Conversational Role Influences Speech Imitation

This study assessed the impact of a conscious imitation goal on phonetic convergence during conversational interaction. Twelve pairs of unacquainted talkers participated in a conversational task designed to elicit between-talker repetitions of the same lexical items. To assess the degree to which the talkers exhibited phonetic convergence during the conversational task, these repetitions were used to elicit perceptual similarity judgments provided by separate sets of listeners. In addition, perceptual measures of phonetic convergence were compared with measures of articulation rates and vowel formants. The sex of the pair of talkers and a talker\u27s role influenced the degree of phonetic convergence, and perceptual judgments of phonetic convergence were not consistently related to individual acoustic-phonetic attributes. Therefore, even with a conscious imitative goal, situational factors were shown to retain a strong influence on phonetic form in conversational interaction

Influence of Role-Switching On Phonetic Convergence in Conversation

The current study examined phonetic convergence when talkers alternated roles during conversational interaction. The talkers completed a map navigation task in which they alternated instruction Giver and Receiver roles across multiple map pairs. Previous studies found robust effects of the role of a talker on phonetic convergence, and it was hypothesized that role-switching would either reduce the impact of role or elicit alternating patterns of role-induced conversational dominance and accommodation. In contrast to the hypothesis, the initial role assignments induced a pattern of conversational dominance that persisted throughout the interaction in terms of the amount of time spent talking-Original Givers dominated amount of time talking consistently, even when they acted as Receivers. These results indicate that conversational dominance does not necessarily follow nominal role when roles alternate, and that talkers are influenced by initial role assignment when making acoustic-phonetic adjustments in their speech

Conversational role influences speech imitation

This study assessed the impact of a conscious imitation goal on phonetic convergence during conversational interaction. Twelve pairs of unacquainted talkers participated in a conversational task designed to elicit between-talker repetitions of the same lexical items. To assess the degree to which the talkers exhibited phonetic convergence during the conversational task, these repetitions were used to elicit perceptual similarity judgments provided by separate sets of listeners. In addition, perceptual measures of phonetic convergence were compared with measures of articulation rates and vowel formants. The sex of the pair of talkers and a talker\u27s role influenced the degree of phonetic convergence, and perceptual judgments of phonetic convergence were not consistently related to individual acoustic-phonetic attributes. Therefore, even with a conscious imitative goal, situational factors were shown to retain a strong influence on phonetic form in conversational interaction