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This study provides a framework for measuring conversational dynamics between conversational partners (interlocutors). Conversations from 20 pairs of young, normal-hearing, native-Danish talkers were recorded when speaking in both quiet and noise (70 dBA sound pressure level [SPL]) and in Danish and English. Previous studies investigating the intervals from when one talker stops talking to when the next one starts, termed floor-transfer offsets (FTOs), suggest that typical turn-taking requires interlocutors to predict when the current talker will finish their turn. We hypothesized that adding noise and/or speaking in a second language (L2) would increase the communication difficulty and result in longer and more variable FTOs. The median and interquartile range of FTOs increased slightly in noise, and in L2, there was a small increase in interquartile range but a small decrease in the median of FTO durations. It took the participants longer to complete the task in both L2 and noise, indicating increased communication difficulty. The average duration of interpausal units, that is, units of connected speech surrounded by silences of 180 ms or more, increased by 18% in noise and 8% in L2. These findings suggest that talkers held their turn for longer, allowing more time for speech understanding and planning. In L2, participants spoke slower, and in both L2 and noise, they took fewer turns. These changes in behavior may have offset some of the increased difficulty when communicating in noise or L2. We speculate that talkers prioritize the maintenance of turn-taking timing over other speech measures.

In previous studies, several methods have been used to elicit conversation between talkers. Some involved participants solving a shared task (e.g., describing a map or finding differences between two near-identical pictures), while others have recorded more spontaneous dialogue (e.g., telephone calls). Since the goals of the talkers, and thus the definition of successful conversation, varies across these methods, it is thought likely that turn-taking behaviour will vary depending on how conversations are elicited. The present study investigated this by eliciting English conversations from 7 pairs of native-Danish talkers using two methods: solving a Diapix task and engaging in unguided “small talk”. For each method, in both quiet and 70 dBA babble, two conversations were recorded for each pair. Overall, several differences in conversational behaviour were observed. When engaged in “small talk”, participants spoke more rapidly, produced longer utterances, and replied more quickly than compared to when they were solving the Diapix task. These within-pair differences indicate that comparisons of behaviour across studies should also consider the method by which conversations were elicited.

Previous studies of floor-transfer offsets (FTO), the offset from when one talker stops talking to the next one starts, suggest that normal conversation requires interlocutors to predict when each other will finish their turn. We hypothesized that increasing the difficulty of holding a conversation by adding noise and/or speaking in a second language (L2) would result in longer FTOs. Conversations from 20 pairs of normal-hearing (NH), native-Danish talkers were elicited using the Diapix task in four conditions consisting of combinations of language (Danish vs. English) and noise background (quiet vs. ICRA 7 noise presented at 70 dBA). Overall, participants took longer to complete the task in both noise and in L2 indicating that both factors reduced communication efficiency. In contrast to our predictions, in the presence of noise, the median of the FTO distribution decreased by approximately 40 ms and the standard deviation decreased by approximately 60 ms. However, the average median duration of utterances increased by 40% in noise. These findings are consistent with talkers holding their turn for longer, which may allow more time for their own speech planning. Overall, the results suggest that talkers may prioritise maintaining social norms for turn-taking fluency when communicating in difficult environments.