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Coordination of understanding in face-to-face narrative dialogue

Coordination of Understanding in Face-to-Face Narrative Dialogue Kathleen M. Eberhard (eberhard.1@nd.edu) Hannele B. M. Nicholson (hnichol1@nd.edu) Department of Psychology, University of Notre Dame Notre Dame, IN 46556 USA Abstract We report the results of a study investigating speakers' and addressees' coordination of understanding in face-to-face narrative dialogue. Analyses of the occurrence of addressees' acknowledgments and exemplifications of understanding showed that nonverbal forms consistently coincided with the speakers' gaze on their face. In contrast, there was less consistent correspondence between the addressees' verbal evidence of understanding and the speakers' gaze on their face. Evidence that speakers gaze off addressees' faces because of the demands of utterance planning or encoding comes from a correspondence between their gaze off the addressee's face and their production of pause fillers (uh and um), especially at the beginning of clauses. Keywords: spoken dialogue; disfluency; gaze patterns Introduction Conversation is the quintessential form of language use. It is a purposeful activity requiring the coordination of two or more people. The aim of the research presented here was to examine the coordination process in a face-to-face storytelling situation by examining speakers' gaze patterns relative to delays in speaking signaled by pause fillers and relative to addressees' signals of understanding. According to Clark (1996), language use is a joint project consisting of 4 hierarchical levels of speaker-addressee coordinated actions, which he refers to as an action ladder. Consider the case of a speaker asking an addressee, What time is it? . At the first level, the speaker is executing a behavior that consists of producing the sounds of the utterance. The addressee, in turn, attends to the behavior (speech). At the second level, the speaker is presenting words and phrases, which the addressee identifies as such. At the third level, the speaker is signaling an intended meaning (requesting the current time), and the addressee is understanding the meaning. At the fourth level, the speaker is proposing a joint project, namely that the addressee inform him of the current time, and the addressee considers accepting the proposal. There are two essential properties of this hierarchy of actions. The first is upward causality: The actions at a lower level cause the actions at the next level up. The second property is downward evidence: Evidence of successful completion of the actions at a higher level constitutes evidence of success at all levels below it. As Clark (1996, p. 222) states, A fundamental principle of any intentional action is that people look for evidence that they have done what they intended to do. Furthermore, people strive to provide evidence that is sufficient for current purposes, in a timely manner, and with the least effort. In the example above, the valid, timely, and sufficient evidence of success comes from the addressee responding with the current time soon after the end of the speaker's utterance. In doing so, the addressee provides positive evidence of her acceptance of the speaker's proposed joint project at level 4 as well as positive evidence of her understanding the meaning of the speaker's utterance (level 3), her identification of the speaker's words (level 2), and her attending to the speaker's speech (level 1). In contrast to interactive conversation, in narrative dialogues, the speaker produces sequences of utterances across an extended time, resulting in minimal turn-taking. Thus, the joint project at level 4 is an extended proposal consisting of multiple iterations through the lower 3 levels. In this situation, the highest level of evidence of successful completion is level 3 (signaling and understanding of meaning). There are two main forms of evidence that are provided by addressees. One form is acknowledgments, which are assertions of understanding, also referred to as backchannels (Yngve, 1970) and generic listener responses (Bavelas, Coates, & Johnson, 2000). They may be verbal, e.g., mhm, okay, uh huh, or non-verbal head nods. The second form of evidence is exemplifications of understanding, also referred to as specific listener responses (Bavelas et al, 2000). Exemplifications are reactions to the meaning of the speaker's utterance, and, as such, they constitute more valid evidence. They can be verbal, e.g., wow, oh, that's awful, or non-verbal, e.g., facial gestures, such as winces, grimaces, looks of surprise or sadness. Both acknowledgments and exemplifications are brief, requiring little planning and they often overlap with or occur at the end of the speaker's utterance (e.g., Goodwin, 1981). Evidence that the addressee is attending to the speaker's execution of a communicative behavior (level 1) is provided by his or her maintaining gaze on the speaker's face (e.g., Argyle & Cook, 1976; Ehrlichman, 1981; Goodwin, 1981; Kendon, 1967). In contrast, the speaker often exhibits a pattern of gazing on and off the addressee's face (e.g., Ehrlichman, 1981, Goodwin, 1981; Kendon, 1967). In interactive conversation, this asymmetry in mutual gaze is considered one cue to turn-taking (Duncan, 1974; Kendon, 1967; Maclay & Osgood, 1959). That is, speakers typically gaze at the addressee at the end of their turn, thereby relinquishing the floor. However, the asymmetry in speaker's and addressee's gaze on the other's face is also observed in narrative dialogues. In this situation, the speaker's gaze on and off the addressee's face is likely to reflect other aspects of