D: what we 've learned about is overlaps in this situation , is that the first  the first - order thing I would say is that there 's a lot of them .
E: Yeah .
D: Right ?
D: In in the sense that i if you said if i i i
B: Yeah , I I don't di I agree with that .
D: In a way , I guess what I 'm comparing to is more the common sense notion of how how much people overlap .
D: Uh you know the fact that when when when , uh , Adam was looking for a stretch of of speech before , that didn't have any overlaps , and he w he was having such a hard time
D: and now I look at this and I go , " well , I can see why he was having such a hard time " .
B: Right .
B: That 's also true of Switchboard .
D: It 's happening a lot .
D: I wasn't saying it wasn't .
B: It may not be B: Right .
B: So it 's just , um
D: Right ?
D: I was commenting about this .
B: OK .
D: I 'm saying if I  I 'm saying if I have this complicated thing in front of me , and we sh which , you know we 're gonna get much more sophisticated about when we get lots more data ,
B: All I 'm saying is that from the
D: But Then , if I was gonna describe to somebody what did you learn right here , about , you know , the the modest amount of data that was analyzed I 'd say , " Well , the first - order thing was there was a lot of overlaps " .
D: In fact  and it 's not just an overlap bunch of overlaps second - order thing is it 's not just a bunch of overlaps in one particular point , but that there 's overlaps , uh throughout the thing .
H: Right .
D: And that 's interesting .
B: Right .
B: No , I I agree with that .
D: That 's all .
B: I 'm just  saying that it may  the reason you get overlaps may or may not be due to sort of the number of people in the meeting .
D: Oh yeah .
D: Yeah .
B: And that 's all .
D: Yeah , I wasn't making any statement about that .
B: And and it would actually be interesting to find out
D: Yeah .
B: because some of the data say Switchboard , which isn't exactly the same kind of context ,
B: I mean these are two people who don't know each other and so forth ,
B: But we should still be able to somehow say what what is the added contra contribution to sort of overlap time of each additional person , or something like that .
H: Yep .
H: I could certainly see it going either way .
D: Yeah , that would be good to know ,
F: OK , now .
A: What D: but w we F: Wh - yeah , I I agree I agree with Adam .
B: But yeah .
E: Yeah .
F: And the reason is because I think there 's a limit  there 's an upper bound on how many you can have , simply from the standpoint of audibility .
F: When we speak we we do make a judgment of " can " you know , as adults .
D: Mm - hmm .
B: Right .
F: I mean , children don't adjust so well ,
F: I mean , if a truck goes rolling past , adults will well , depending , but mostly , adults will will  will hold off to what  to finish the end of the sentence till the till the noise is past .
D: Mm - hmm .
F: And I think we generally do monitor things like that , about whether we whether our utterance will be in the clear or not .
B: Right .
F: And partly it 's related to rhythmic structure in conversation ,
F: so , you know , you you t Yeah , this is d also um , people tend to time their their  their , um when they come into the conversation based on the overall rhythmic , uh uh , ambient thing .
A: Well B: Right .
F: So you don't want to be c cross - cutting .
F: And and , just to finish this , that um That I think that there may be an upper bound on how many overlaps you can have , simply from the standpoint of audibility and how loud the other people are who are already in the fray .
F: But I you know , of certain types .
F: Now if it 's just backchannels , people may be doing that with less intention of being heard , just sort of spontaneously doing backchannels ,
F: in which case that those might there may be no upper bound on those .
G: I I have a feeling that backchannels , which are the vast majority of overlaps in Switchboard , uh , don't play as big a role here , because it 's very unnatural I think , to backchannel if in a multi - audience you know , in a multi - person  audience .
B: If you can see them , actually .
B: It 's interesting ,
B: so if you watch people are going like <comment> <comment> Right right , like this here ,
G: Right .
E: Yeah .
B: but That may not be the case if you couldn't see them .
D: u
G: But  but , it 's sort of odd if one person 's speaking and everybody 's listening ,
G: and it 's unusual to have everybody going " uh - huh , uh - huh "
D: Actually , I think I 've done it a fair number of times today .
D: But .
B: Yeah .
B: There 's a lot of head - nodding , in this
H: Um .
G: Yeah .
H: Yep , we need to put trackers on it .
A: In in the two - person E: Yeah , yeah , yeah .
F: He could , he could .
G: Plus plus plus the G: Yeah .
G: So so actually , um That 's in part because the nodding , if you have visual contact , the nodding has the same function ,
G: but on the phone , in Switchboard you you that wouldn't work .
H: Yeah , you don't have it .
G: So so you need to use the backchannel .
H: Your mike is A: So , in the two - person conversations , when there 's backchannel , is there a great deal of overlap in the speech ?
H: That is an earphone , so if you just put it so it 's on your ear .
A: or A: Cuz my impression is sometimes it happens when there 's a pause ,
B: Yes .
H: There you go .
B: Yeah .
H: Thank you .
F: E for example .
A: you know , like you you get a lot of backchannel , when somebody 's pausing
B: Yes .
B: Right .
F: She 's doing that .
B: Sorry , what were you saying ?
A: It 's hard to do both ,
A: huh ?
A: Um no , when when when there 's backchannel , I mean , just I was just listening , and and when there 's two people talking and there 's backchannel it seems like , um the backchannel happens when , you know , the pitch drops and the first person B: Oh .
A: and a lot of times , the first person actually stops talking and then there 's a backchannel and then they start up again ,
A: and so I 'm wondering about h I just wonder how much overlap there is .
A: Is there a lot ?
B: I think there 's a lot of the kind that Jose was talking about , where  I mean , this is called " precision timing " in conversation analysis , where  they come in overlapping , but at a point where the information is mostly complete .
B: So all you 're missing is some last syllables or something or the last word or some highly predictable words .
A: Mmm .
A: Mm - hmm .
B: So technically , it 's an overlap .
B: But you know , from information flow point of view it 's not an overlap in the predictable information .
A: But maybe a just a small overlap ?
E: More , yeah .
H: It 'd be interesting if we could do prediction .
A: I was just thinking more in terms of alignment , alignment overlap .
B: Yeah .
H: Language model prediction of overlap , that would be really interesting .
G: So  so D: Yeah .
B: Well , that 's exactly , exactly why we wanted to study the precise timing of overlaps ins in uh Switchboard ,
G: Right .
H: Right .
G: So so here 's a here 's a first interesting labeling task .
B: say , because there 's a lot of that .
G: Uh , to distinguish between , say , backchannels  precision timing Sort of you know , benevolent overlaps , and and   and w and and sort of , um I don't know , hostile overlaps , where someone is trying to grab the floor from someone else .
H: Mm - hmm .
H: Let 's pick a different word .
E: Yeah .
G: Uh , that that might be an interesting , um problem to look at .
E: Yeah .
A: Hostile takeovers .
E: Yeah .
D: Yeah .
F: Well , I mean you could do that .
E: Yeah .
F: I ju I I think that in this meeting I really had the feeling that wasn't happening , that the hostile hostile type .
F: These were these were benevolent types , as people finishing each other 's sentences , and stuff .
G: OK .
B: Mm - hmm .
G: Um , I could imagine that as there 's a fair number of um cases where , and this is sort of , not really hostile , but sort of competitive , where one person is finishing something and you have , like , two or three people jumping trying to  trying to  trying to , uh grab the next turn .
H: Trying to get the floor .
D: Yeah .
G: And so it 's not against the person who talks first because actually we 're all waiting for that person to finish .
G: But they all want to be next .
D: I have a feeling most of these things are that  that are not a benevolent kind are are  are , uh um  are are competitive as opposed to real really really hostile .
G: Right .
F: Yeah , I agree .
D: But .
A: I wonder what determines who gets the floor ?
F: I agree .
F: Well , there are various things , you you have the A: I mean D: Uh a vote vote in Florida .
H: It 's been studied a lot .
D: Yeah .
E: Voting for D: Um , o one thing I I wanted to or you can tell a good joke and then everybody 's laughing and you get a chance to g break in .
G: Seniority .
D: But .
D: But .
D: Um .
D: You know , the other thing I was thinking was that , um these all these interesting questions are , of course , pretty hard to answer with , uh u you know , a small amount of data .
H: Ach .
D: So , um I wonder if what you 're saying suggests that we should make a conscious attempt to have , um a a fair number of meetings with , uh a smaller number of people .
D: Right ?
D: I mean we most of our meetings are uh , meetings currently with say five , six , seven , eight people
D: Should we really try to have some two - person meetings , or some three - person meetings and re record them just to to to beef up the the statistics on that ?
F: That 's a control .
F: Well , it seems like there are two possibilities there ,
F: I mean i it seems like if you have just two people it 's not really , y like a meeting , w is not as similar as the rest of the  of the sample .
F: It depends on what you 're after , of course ,
F: but It seems like that would be more a case of the control condition , compared to , uh an experimental condition , with more than two .
H: Mm - hmm .
D: Well , Liz was raising the question of of whether i it 's the number there 's a relationship between the number of people and the number of overlaps or type of overlaps there ,
F: Mm - hmm .
D: and , um If you had two people meeting in this kind of circumstance then you 'd still have the visuals .
D: You wouldn't have that difference also that you have in the say , in Switchboard data .
F: Mm - hmm .
D: Uh
F: Yeah , I 'm just thinking that 'd be more like a c control condition .
D: Yeah .
F: Mm - hmm .
H: Well , but from the acoustic point of view , it 's all good .
E: Yeah .
E: Is the same .
D: Yeah , acoustic is fine ,
G: If if the goal were to just look at overlap you would you could serve yourself save yourself a lot of time but not even transcri transcribe the words .
D: but H: Yep .
B: Well , I was thinking you should be able to do this from the acoustics , on the close - talking mikes ,
H: Well , that 's the that was my my status report ,
D: Yeah .
F: You 've been working on that .
B: right ?
B: Right , I mean Adam was F: Yeah .
E: Yeah .
H: so  Once we 're done with this stuff discussing ,
B: right .
D: Yeah .
B: I mean , not as well as what I mean , you wouldn't be able to have any kind of typology , obviously ,
H: Mm - hmm .
B: but you 'd get some rough statistics .
D: But what what do you think about that ?
B: So .
D: Do you think that would be useful ?
D: I 'm just thinking that as an action item of whether we should try to record some two - person meetings or something .
B: I guess my my first comment was , um only that um we should n not attribute overlaps only to meetings ,
B: but maybe that 's obvious ,
B: maybe everybody knew that ,
D: Yeah .
B: but that in normal conversation with two people there 's an awful lot of the same kinds of overlap ,
D: Mm - hmm .
B: and that it would be interesting to look at whether there are these kinds of constraints that Jane mentioned , that what maybe the additional people add to this competition that happens right after a turn ,
B: you know , because now you can have five people trying to grab the turn ,
B: but pretty quickly there 're they back off
B: and you go back to this sort of only one person at a time with one person interrupting at a time .
D: Mm - hmm .
B: So , I don't know .
B: To answer your question I it I don't think it 's crucial to have controls
B: but I think it 's worth recording all the meetings we can .
H: Can .
D: Well , OK .
E: Yeah .
B: So , um you know .
G: I I have an idea .
B: D I wouldn't not record a two - person meeting just because it only has two people .
H: Right .
G: Could we Could we , um G: we have have in the past and I think continue will continue to have a fair number of uh phone conference calls .
D: Uh - huh .
H: Yeah , we talked about this repeatedly .
G: And , uh , and as a to , um as another c c comparison condition , we could um see what what what happens in terms of overlap , when you don't have visual contact .
G: So , um B: Can we actually record ?
H: It just seems like that 's a very different thing than what we 're doing .
D: Uh Well , we 'll have to set up for it .
B: I mean physically can we record the o the other D: Yeah .
D: Well , we 're not really set up for it to do that .
D: But .
G: Or , this is getting a little extravagant , we could put up some kind of blinds or something to  to remove , uh visual contact .
D: Yeah .
H: Barriers !
C: Yeah .
B: That 's what they did on Map Task , you know , this Map Task corpus ?
B: They ran exactly the same pairs of people with and without visual cues
B: and it 's quite interesting .
D: Well , we we record this meeting so regularly it wouldn't be that I mean a little strange .
H: OK , we can record , but no one can look at each other .
B: Well , we could just put b blindfolds on .
C: Yeah .
H: Close your eyes .
G: Well y no you f
F: Blindf
G: Yeah , Yeah .
H: Turn off the lights .
B: and we 'd take a picture of everybody sitting here with blindfolds .
B: That would D: Oh , th that was the other thing ,
D: weren't we gonna take a picture at the beginning of each of these meetings ?
H: Um , what I had thought we were gonna do is just take pictures of the whiteboards . rather than take pictures of the meeting .
F: Well , linguistic H: And , uh F: Yeah .
D: Yes .
F: Linguistic anthropologists would would suggest it would be useful to also take a picture of the meeting .
D: There 's a head nodding here vigorously , yeah .
A: Why why do we want to have a picture of the meeting ?
F: The because you get then the spatial relationship of the speakers .
B: Ee - you mean , transc no G: Well , you could do that by just noting on the enrollment sheet the  the seat number .
F: And that could be
E: Yeah Yeah .
E: Yeah .
H: Seat number , that 's a good idea .
H: I 'll do that .
E: Yeah .
H: I 'll do that on the next set of forms .
G: So you 'd number them somehow .
E: Yeah .
E: Is possible to get information from the rhythmic f from the ge , eh uh , files .
H: I finally remembered to put , uh put native language on the newer forms .
A: We can can't you figure it out from the mike number ?
H: No .
A: OK .
H: The wireless ones .
H: And even the jacks , I mean , I 'm sitting here and the jack is over in front of you .
A: Oh .
B: But probably from these you could 've <comment> infer it .
G: Yeah , but It 's it would be trivial H: It would be another task .
B: It would be a research task .
H: Having having ground tu truth would be nice , so seat number would be good .
A: You know where you could get it ?
B: Yeah , yeah .
E: Yeah .
A: Beam - forming during the digit uh stuff .
H: So I 'm gonna put little labels on all the chairs with the seat number .
C: Mm - hmm .
H: That 's a good idea .
G: Not the chairs .
B: But you have to keep the chairs in the same pla like here .
H: But , uh G: The chairs are Chairs are movable .
G: Put them  Like , put them on the table where they E: The chair <comment> Yeah .
H: Yep .
C: Yeah .
H: Yep .
F: But you know , they the s the linguistic anthropologists would say it would be good to have a digital picture anyway ,
A: Just remembered a joke .
F: because you get a sense also of posture .
G: What people were wearing .
H: Yeah .
F: Posture , and we could like , you know , block out the person 's face or whatever
B: The fashion statement .
F: but  but , you know , these are important cues ,
G: Oh , Andreas was A: How big their heads are .
F: I mean the the how a person is sitting is D: But if you just
G: Yeah .
D: f But from one picture , I don't know that you really get that .
G: Andreas was wearing that same old sweater again .
D: Right ?
D: You 'd want a video for that , I think .
F: It 'd be better than nothing , is is i Just from a single picture I think you can tell some aspects .
E: A video , yeah .
D: Think so ?
F: I mean I I could tell you I mean , if I if I 'm in certain meetings I notice that there are certain people who really do eh The body language is very uh is very interesting in terms of the dominance aspect .
G: And And D: Hmm .
G: Yeah .
G: And and Morgan had that funny hair again .
F: Yeah . <comment> Well , I mean you black out the that part .
H: Hmm .
F: But it 's just , you know , the the body
A: He agreed .
F: you know ?
H: Of course , the where we sit at the table , I find is very interesting , that we do tend to cong to gravitate to the same place each time .
F: Yeah .
H: and it 's somewhat coincidental .
H: I 'm sitting here so that I can run into the room if the hardware starts , you know , catching fire or something .
G: Oh , no , you you just like to be in charge , that 's why you 're sitting H: I just want to be at the head of the table .
G: Yeah .
H: Take control .
D: Speaking of taking control , you said you had some research to talk about .
F: Yeah .
H: Yeah , I 've been playing with , um uh , using the close - talking mike to do to try to figure out who 's speaking .
F: Yeah .
H: So my first attempt was just using thresholding and filtering , that we talked about about two weeks ago ,
H: and so I played with that a little bit , and it works O K , except that it 's very sensitive to your choice of your filter width and your threshold .