Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Date

2025

Document Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy

Department

Communication Sciences & Disorders

Committee Chair

Eugene Buder

Committee Member

Kelsey Mankel

Committee Member

Lynda Feenaughty

Committee Member

Meredith Ray

Abstract

Introduction: Many turn-taking studies examine measures from temporal, neural, or respiratory domains separately as well as limit the turn-taking behaviors participants can engage in by dictating when and for how long they are allowed to speak. A multi-domain approach that does not restrict when participants are allowed to respond would be able to bridge these gaps. Objectives: Determine whether the presence of a live presenter elicits more ecologically valid response times in a question-answer paradigm than the use of pre-recorded audio. Also, determine whether participants begin executing speech motor plans upon recognition of answer-relevant information or upon detection of a turn-yielder’s end of turn. Lastly, investigate neural signals that correspond with the onset of response planning and determine how these signals correlate temporally to speech planning. Methods: 29 participants had their electrical brain activity, respiratory volume changes, and response times measured while being presented two rounds of 232 short answer questions. 116 matching pairs of questions adapted from Bögels et al. (2015) contained information necessary to answer either halfway through (EARLY-type) or at the end (LATE-type). These questions were presented in two styles: as pre-recorded audio (recorded) or by a live presenter (live). Results: Response times for the recorded condition for both EARLY and LATE question types were significantly larger than both the live presentation style as well as when compared to Bögels et al. (2015). Neural data contained too much individual variation for any significant differences between conditions to be able to be extracted. Participants did not inhale in a typical pre-speech manner before responding a majority of the time. A respiratory sub-analysis, however, showed a positive correlation between participant age and number of speech-like inhalations. Conclusion: Question-answer response times were representative of natural turn-taking times only when presented by a live examiner, when compared to a pre-recorded audio-only condition. The circumstances of presentation appears to have a large effect on question response time, suggesting that the presentation of stimuli in a more or less ecologically valid environment has a significant impact on how participants respond to them. Short responses led to a reduced prevalence of sharp, turn-taking inhalations.

Comments

Data is provided by the student.

Library Comment

Dissertation or thesis originally submitted to ProQuest.

Notes

Open access

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