Timing and turn taking in children's conversations1

Abstract The relations between pauses and turn taking in the dyadic conversations of three age groups of nursery school children were investigated. In Study 1 the duration of between‐speaker pauses in three types of successfully completed exchanges were compared. In Study 2 the duration of within‐speaker pauses was examined in sequences in which a speaker re‐solicited a response after the partner had failed to respond. Pause durations varied systematically across the exchange types and these durations were consistently briefer than the pauses preceding the re‐solicitations. Rare cases of simultaneous speech were also examined. The results suggest that children use their expectations of a context‐specific, normal range of pause duration in timing the onset of a turn‐at‐speaking. Notes Portions of this paper were presented at the Biennial Meeting of the Society for Research in Child Development, San Francisco, March 1979. The research was supported by NIMH Grant #1R03MH30862–01 and by the Biomedical Research Support Grant to the Johns Hopkins University #5S07RR07641–12. Preparation of the manuscript was facilitated by a grant from the Spencer Foundation. We are grateful to John Gottman and Daniel Stern for their comments on an earlier version of this paper.