4 ms·

There's some interesting things in this article, other than the "universal" gap. Tidbits like this: > "The brevity of these silences is doubly astonishing when

There's some interesting things in this article, other than the "universal" gap. Tidbits like this: > "The brevity of these silences is doubly astonishing when you consider that it takes at least 600 milliseconds for us to retrieve a single word from memory and get ready to actually say it. For a short clause, that processing time rises to 1500 milliseconds. This means that we have to start planning our responses in the middle of a partner’s turn, using everything from grammatical cues to changes in pitch. We continuously predict what the rest of a sentence will contain, while similarly building our hypothetical rejoinder, all using largely overlapping neural circuits." Makes sense. I (and I'm assuming everyone) will have stories/anecdotes/arguments at the ready during a conversation, and they'll vary and change based on what the other parties are saying. I just didn't realize that this was a necessary thing.

derefr 11y ago
Beyond this, it's doubly unsurprising when you remember that the brain isn't anything like a context-switching CPU, but much more like a bunch of discrete DSP circuits. Much like computers can offload video decoding to a dedicated DSP "pipeline" that will continue performing each step without being coordinated by the CPU, language processing and construction—word-lookup, grammar, etc.—are steps in an offloaded "pipeline" of brain areas. Though, highlighting a specific sentence of your quote, the analogous operation becomes quite clear: > We continuously predict what the rest of a sentence will contain[...] Speculative execution via branch prediction! (The important thing to highlight with that analogy, though, is that the brain has multiple "branch predictors." In fact, one could think of speculative execution as an inherent low-level feature of each node in a recurrent neural network. This isn't our executive function "predicting the future" generally; this is each part of the brain going on with its work independently by making assumptions that its speculative work isn't going to go to waste.)
developer2 11y ago
I think we typically already know how we are going to respond to the earlier section(s) of the other person's dialog, and this is why our response is ready so quickly. If your counterpart speaks 3 sentences, I suspect that in many cases, your response really only takes into account their first and maybe the second sentence. Their third sentence likely often adds extraneous details that don't require you to adjust your response. Or, in the case of debating (ie: your response is a rebuttal in an argument), we often largely ignore what the other person has said and ramble off a response that doesn't even address the new information given to us by the other party. I find a lot of conversations to be more like two separate one-sided discussions where each person is selfishly just pushing their own talking points, rather than wrapping the other party entirely within the discussion. Unfortunately, something about my wiring doesn't seem to match these timing cues up with my peers. In a group discussion involving three or more people, I'm desynchronized from the others. Far too often when I begin to speak, I get pre-emptively cut off by someone else who "beats me" to the cue. I think I take a little more time to plan what to say before I open my mouth, whereas my peers are ready to ramble unpolished responses the moment someone else stops speaking. Too many people just like to hear themselves talk and be the centre of attention the millisecond someone else's moment in the spotlight is finished. >> a sign that we’re spending most of our “listening” time actually prepping what we are going to say (As Chuck Pahlaniuk once wrote, “The only reason why we ask other people how their weekend was is so we can tell them about our own weekend.”) The article covers my beliefs with this quote, but then goes on to say this study proves otherwise. I guess I'm a pessimist. Edit: As a side anecdote, I am 30 and have a much easier time hanging out with and speaking with 45+ year olds. Conversation flows naturally and my timing cues are much more in line, as opposed to the rush-to-be-first situation I run into with people my own age.
- gohrt 11y ago
  Your anecdote is inconsistent with the "universal" short gap, and I think you are more correct. The "universality" comes from averaging that smears away individual differences
  - developer2 11y ago
    I suppose if you're going to draw a bell curve for the gaps people exhibit, someone has to fall on the outer edges. I'm one of the outliers on the right side of the graph in terms of milliseconds. :)
vdnkh 11y ago
Interesting. My algorithm is a bit optimistic as I tend to interrupt people (getting better at it!).
- mod 11y ago
  Realizing you did it goes a long way to stopping--kudos!
mercer 11y ago
Having spent much of my life around people speaking languages I often had trouble understanding, the quoted phenomenon becomes even more obvious. I got better and better at maintaining the rhythm of a conversation, and occasionally even fooling someone into thinking I understood them, simply based on verbal cues, snippets of grammatical cues and pitch (and perhaps other signifiers). And perhaps this is an even better (and much cuter) example of the phenomenon: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_JmA2ClUvUY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_JmA2ClUvUY (talking babies)

derefr 11y ago

Beyond this, it's doubly unsurprising when you remember that the brain isn't anything like a context-switching CPU, but much more like a bunch of discrete DSP circuits. Much like computers can offload video decoding to a dedicated DSP "pipeline" that will continue performing each step without being coordinated by the CPU, language processing and construction—word-lookup, grammar, etc.—are steps in an offloaded "pipeline" of brain areas. Though, highlighting a specific sentence of your quote, the analogous operation becomes quite clear: > We continuously predict what the rest of a sentence will contain[...] Speculative execution via branch prediction! (The important thing to highlight with that analogy, though, is that the brain has multiple "branch predictors." In fact, one could think of speculative execution as an inherent low-level feature of each node in a recurrent neural network. This isn't our executive function "predicting the future" generally; this is each part of the brain going on with its work independently by making assumptions that its speculative work isn't going to go to waste.)

developer2 11y ago

I think we typically already know how we are going to respond to the earlier section(s) of the other person's dialog, and this is why our response is ready so quickly. If your counterpart speaks 3 sentences, I suspect that in many cases, your response really only takes into account their first and maybe the second sentence. Their third sentence likely often adds extraneous details that don't require you to adjust your response. Or, in the case of debating (ie: your response is a rebuttal in an argument), we often largely ignore what the other person has said and ramble off a response that doesn't even address the new information given to us by the other party. I find a lot of conversations to be more like two separate one-sided discussions where each person is selfishly just pushing their own talking points, rather than wrapping the other party entirely within the discussion. Unfortunately, something about my wiring doesn't seem to match these timing cues up with my peers. In a group discussion involving three or more people, I'm desynchronized from the others. Far too often when I begin to speak, I get pre-emptively cut off by someone else who "beats me" to the cue. I think I take a little more time to plan what to say before I open my mouth, whereas my peers are ready to ramble unpolished responses the moment someone else stops speaking. Too many people just like to hear themselves talk and be the centre of attention the millisecond someone else's moment in the spotlight is finished. >> a sign that we’re spending most of our “listening” time actually prepping what we are going to say (As Chuck Pahlaniuk once wrote, “The only reason why we ask other people how their weekend was is so we can tell them about our own weekend.”) The article covers my beliefs with this quote, but then goes on to say this study proves otherwise. I guess I'm a pessimist. Edit: As a side anecdote, I am 30 and have a much easier time hanging out with and speaking with 45+ year olds. Conversation flows naturally and my timing cues are much more in line, as opposed to the rush-to-be-first situation I run into with people my own age.

gohrt 11y ago
Your anecdote is inconsistent with the "universal" short gap, and I think you are more correct. The "universality" comes from averaging that smears away individual differences
- developer2 11y ago
  I suppose if you're going to draw a bell curve for the gaps people exhibit, someone has to fall on the outer edges. I'm one of the outliers on the right side of the graph in terms of milliseconds. :)

vdnkh 11y ago

Interesting. My algorithm is a bit optimistic as I tend to interrupt people (getting better at it!).

mod 11y ago
Realizing you did it goes a long way to stopping--kudos!

mercer 11y ago

Having spent much of my life around people speaking languages I often had trouble understanding, the quoted phenomenon becomes even more obvious. I got better and better at maintaining the rhythm of a conversation, and occasionally even fooling someone into thinking I understood them, simply based on verbal cues, snippets of grammatical cues and pitch (and perhaps other signifiers). And perhaps this is an even better (and much cuter) example of the phenomenon: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_JmA2ClUvUY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_JmA2ClUvUY (talking babies)