"Dyadosyncrasy", Idiosyncrasy and Demographic Factors in Turn-Taking
This research addresses the problem of understanding conversational dynamics for linguists and social scientists, but it is incremental as it builds on existing turn-taking studies with new data analysis.
The study investigated how demographic and individual factors influence turn-taking in dialogue, finding that while sex and age have small significant effects, individual differences and dyadic relationships have a greater impact on Transition Floor Offset.
Turn-taking in dialogue follows universal constraints but also varies significantly. This study examines how demographic (sex, age, education) and individual factors shape turn-taking using a large dataset of US English conversations (Fisher). We analyze Transition Floor Offset (TFO) and find notable interspeaker variation. Sex and age have small but significant effects female speakers and older individuals exhibit slightly shorter offsets - while education shows no effect. Lighter topics correlate with shorter TFOs. However, individual differences have a greater impact, driven by a strong idiosyncratic and an even stronger "dyadosyncratic" component - speakers in a dyad resemble each other more than they resemble themselves in different dyads. This suggests that the dyadic relationship and joint activity are the strongest determinants of TFO, outweighing demographic influences.