We use conversation analysis to both qualitatively and quantitatively demonstrate that, in a specific action context, an answerer's gaze orientation at the end of their answer's first verbal turn-constructional unit (TCU) is one cooperating element of a multi-resource gestalt for managing the answer-turn's transition relevance. Specifically,…

When communicating, interlocutors negotiate knowledge by proposing propositional content to be added to their shared common ground. The way in which speakers put forward propositional content -- expressing more or less confidence in its truthfulness -- may affect the way in which other interlocutors react to such content. This article examines…

How do people determine whether a conversation is good or bad? Do conversational phenomena (reaching common ground, striving to contribute equally, successful conversational closings) influence judgments of conversation quality and recall of conversations? We tested whether individuals reading previously transcribed conversations considered…

Conversational memory is subject to a number of biases. For instances, references which were reused during dialogue are remembered better than non-reused references. Two experiments examined whether speakers are aware that they are subject to such biases and whether they use information about reference origin (i.e., information about who said…

The "given-new contract" entails that speakers must distinguish for their addressee whether references are new or already part of their dialogue. Past research had found that, in a monologue to a listener, speakers shortened repeated words. However, the notion of the given-new contract is inherently dialogic, with an addressee and the…

We examined whether and how conversational roles shape the extent to which details and recollections surrounding World War II (WWII) emerge in family conversations. Each family was tasked with collaboratively discussing four topics surrounding WWII specific to Belgium. We then conducted both quantitative and qualitative analyses. The former…

This study examined conversational turn-taking when reading scripted dialogue versus having a spontaneous conversation. When reading, listeners waited until speakers' turns had been completed before moving to start their own turns, and gap lengths between turns were longer than those of spontaneous, natural conversation. Theatrical performance…

Is it important to hear positions opposing one's own from others who genuinely believe them? We examine whether the thinking of those who engage in discourse with peers who hold an opposing view benefit by hearing arguments favoring the opposing position expressed by individuals known to hold this position. We report on 131 young adolescents who…

When two people interact, reference presentation is shaped with the intention of supporting addressee understanding, allowing for ease of acceptance, thus minimizing overall collaborative effort. To date, analysis of such "audience design" has focused largely on adult-adult or adult-child interaction but seldom on adult-teenager…

People overhearing referential communication understand more when they listen in on dialogues rather than monologues. Some have proposed this is because entrainment selects better referential expressions. In a corpus analysis, we considered the role of addressees in contributing to entrainment and measured the degree to which particular…

The present article aims to shed light on the relationship between priming and creativity throughout Chinese children's ontogenetic development. It has been suggested that priming in naturalistic interaction occurs not as an exclusively implicit phenomenon. New methodological desiderata beyond traditional acceptability judgments have been…

We often use pronouns like it or they without explicitly mentioned antecedents. We asked whether the human processing system that resolves such indirect pronouns uses the immediate visual-sensory context in multimodal discourse. Our results showed that people had no difficulty understanding conceptually central referents, whether explicitly…

Evidence is widely recognized as an essential component of argumentation. Existing research has primarily focused on students' use of evidence to construct explanations or claims. In the present study, 54 11- to 12-year-old Chinese students participated in an extended discourse-based argumentation curriculum, along with an equivalent…

When speakers coordinate with one another, they have available a range of alternatives for conceptualizing and describing spatial relationships. To understand the features of successful communication in collaborative spatial tasks, it is important to identify factors that shape speakers' linguistic choices and evaluate them in relation to task…

Learning and dialogue may naturally engender feelings and expressions of uncertainty for a variety of reasons and purposes. Yet, little research has examined how patterns of linguistic uncertainty are enacted and changed over time as students reciprocally influence one another and the dialogical system they are creating. This study describes the…