====== Conversation timing ======

>Turn-taking is ubiquitous in conversation and is the normal case against which alternatives, such as interruptions, are treated as violations that warrant repair.\\ Furthermore, turn-taking involves highly coordinated timing, including a cyclic rise and fall in the probability of initiating speech during brief silences, and involves the notable rarity, especially in two-party conversations, of two speakers’ breaking a silence at once.\\ These phenomena, reported by conversation analysts, have been neglected by cognitive psychologists, and __to date there has been no adequate cognitive explanation.__\\ \\ Source : [[https://link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.3758/BF03206432.pdf|Psychonomic Bulletin and Review, 12 (6), 957-968]]

In 2005, the paper cited above offered a possible solution : that the two people conversing might have in-built mental 'oscillators' which synchronize on the syllable rate. Thus allowing turn-taking, and interruptions with precise timing.

> Here, we propose that, during conversation, endogenous oscillators in the brains of the speaker and the listeners become mutually entrained, on the basis of the speaker’s rate of syllable production.
>\\ [source as above]

To date, the precise mechanisms of any 'endogenous oscillators' are not known.

If there is such a system operating, then it would presumably depend on a precisely-timed mental clock mechanism of some kind. Short and long term timing mechanisms do appear to exist, but their details are also unknown. See : [[content:psychology:general:rhythm_perception]]