This study uses the multi-level coding of a
designed corpus of unscripted task-oriented
dialogues to demonstrate that time to respond
(Inter-Move Interval, IMI) and rate of disfluency
behave like psycholinguistic measures, reaction
time and error rate, in reflecting the speakers'
cognitive burdens. Multiple-regression analyses
show that IMI is sensitive to social distance
between interlocutors, to the difficulty of the task
which the dialogue serves, and to comprehension
of the prior utterance and production of the
current one. Rate of simple overt disfluency, in
contrast, shows social and task effects, with most
of the uniquely explained variance associated
with planning and producing the current
utterance. The results suggest that coded corpora
may be useful in developing models of human
interlocutors.caslpub2260pu
