New Scientist Default Image
Technology

Talking Heads review: Cunning tale of how conversation creates worlds

[ad_1]

New Scientist Default Image

Conversation isn’t just vital to individuals, but to societies as well

Gary Burchell/Digital Vision/Getty Images

Talking Heads
Shane O’Mara (Bodley Head)

HUMAN conversation is highly structured, and those structures are often consistent across languages. In face-to-face conversation, we tend to take turns speaking for about 2 seconds, with a gap of about one-fifth of a second between exchanges. This gap is so short that it is comparable to the response time to a starting pistol, and it is only possible because we anticipate what people are going to say based on just their first …

[ad_2]

Source link

Leave a Reply