Turn-Taking Offsets and Dialogue Context

A number of researchers have studied turn-taking offsets in human-human dialogues. However, that work collapses over a wide number of different turn-taking contexts. In this work, we delve into the turn-taking delays based on different contexts. We show that turn-taking behavior, both who tends to take the turn next, and the turn-taking delays, are dependent on the previous speech act type, the upcoming speech act, and the nature of the dialogue. This strongly suggests that in studying turn-taking, all turn-taking events should not be grouped together. This also suggests that delays are due to cognitive processing of what to say, rather than whether a speaker should take the turn.