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Conversation Electrified: ERP Correlates of Speech Act Recognition in Underspecified Utterances

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Gisladottir, Rosa S., Chwilla, Dorothee J., Levinson, Stephen C.·2015·PLOS ONE
DOI 10.1371/journal.pone.0120068PMC PMC4368040
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Abstract

The ability to recognize speech acts (verbal actions) in conversation is critical for everyday interaction. However, utterances are often underspecified for the speech act they perform, requiring listeners to rely on the context to recognize the action. The goal of this study was to investigate the time-course of auditory speech act recognition in action-underspecified utterances and explore how sequential context (the prior action) impacts this process. We hypothesized that speech acts are recognized early in the utterance to allow for quick transitions between turns in conversation. Event-related potentials (ERPs) were recorded while participants listened to spoken dialogues and performed an action categorization task. The dialogues contained target utterances that each of which could deliver three distinct speech acts depending on the prior turn. The targets were identical across conditions, but differed in the type of speech act performed and how it fit into the larger action sequence. The ERP results show an early effect of action type, reflected by frontal positivities as early as 200 ms after target utterance onset. This indicates that speech act recognition begins early in the turn when the utterance has only been partially processed. Providing further support for early speech act recognition, actions in highly constraining contexts did not elicit an ERP effect to the utterance-final word. We take this to show that listeners can recognize the action before the final word through predictions at the speech act level. However, additional processing based on the complete utterance is required in more complex actions, as reflected by a posterior negativity at the final word when the speech act is in a less constraining context and a new action sequence is initiated. These findings demonstrate that sentence comprehension in conversational contexts crucially involves recognition of verbal action which begins as soon as it can.

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  • Listeners can rapidly infer the speech act of utterances.

    “there are studies showing specifically that listeners can rapidly infer the speech act of utterances”

    From Timing in Conversation (2023) · cites this paper as Gisladottir, Chwilla, & Levinson, 2015

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Authors
Gisladottir, R. S., Chwilla, D. J., & Levinson, S. C.
Affiliations
  • Radboud University Nijmegen (NL)
  • Max Planck Society (DE)
ORCID
Levinson, Stephen C.
Venue
PLOS ONE
Publisher
Public Library of Science (PLoS)
Published
2015-03-20
Volume
10
Issue
3
Pages
e0120068
ISSN
1932-6203 (ISSN-L)
DOI
10.1371/journal.pone.0120068
PMC
PMC4368040
OpenAlex
W1986320816
Cited by
108
References
6
Citations by year
2026: 26 · 2025: 5 · 2024: 7 · 2023: 14 · 2022: 11 · 2021: 12 · 2020: 8 · 2019: 7 · 2018: 2 · 2017: 5 · 2016: 7 · 2015: 3 · 2012: 1
FWCI
3.41
Type
journal article
Language
en
Open access
Licence
Locations
  • PLoS ONE (publishedVersion, cc-by)
  • Europe PMC (PubMed Central) (publishedVersion, cc-by)
  • PubMed Central (publishedVersion, cc-by)
  • PubMed (publishedVersion)
  • DOAJ (DOAJ: Directory of Open Access Journals) (submittedVersion, cc-by-sa)
  • Figshare (submittedVersion, cc-by)
  • MPG.PuRe (Max Planck Society) (submittedVersion, other-oa)
  • Radboud Repository (Radboud University) (submittedVersion)
  • Radboud Repository (Radboud University) (submittedVersion, other-oa)
Funders
  • International Max Planck Research School for Environmental, Cellular and Molecular Microbiology
  • Radboud Universiteit
Topics
  • Life Sciences › Neuroscience › Cognitive Neuroscience › Neurobiology of Language and Bilingualism
  • Social Sciences › Arts and Humanities › Language and Linguistics › Language, Discourse, Communication Strategies
  • Social Sciences › Psychology › Experimental and Cognitive Psychology › Phonetics and Phonology Research
Keywords
speech act recognition, conversation, event-related potentials, turn-taking, sentence comprehension, verbal acts, frontal positivity, posterior negativity, spoken dialogue
MeSH terms
Adolescent, Adult, Evoked Potentials, Female, Humans, Male, Speech

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