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Speech planning at turn transitions in dialogue is associated with increased processing load
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Description: Barthel, M. and Sauppe, S. (2019). Speech planning at turn transitions in dialog is associated with increased processing load. Cognitive Science, 43(7):e12768. https://doi.org/10.1111/cogs.12768 Speech planning is a sophisticated process that, in dialogue, regularly starts in overlap with an incoming turn by a conversation partner. We show that planning spoken responses in overlap with incoming turns is associated with higher processing load than planning in silence. We present analyses of task-evoked pupillary responses (TEPRs) recorded during an experiment employing a dialogic paradigm in which participants took turns with a confederate describing lists of objects, responding to pre-recorded utterances that varied in whether they ended in a verb or an object noun and whether this ending was predictable or not. These manipulations allowed for testing the influence of planning in overlap on processing load and whether speakers proactively modulate the time course of their response planning based on their predictions of turn endings. The turn-taking system exerts pressure on the language processing system by pushing speakers to plan in overlap despite the ensuing increase in processing load.