PhD 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 .
PhD B: If you can see them , actually . It 's interesting , so if you watch people are going like {comment} {comment} Right right , like this here ,
PhD G: Right .
PhD E: Yeah .
PhD B: but That may not be the case if you couldn't see them .
Professor D: u
PhD G: But  but , it 's sort of odd if one person 's speaking and everybody 's listening , and it 's unusual to have everybody going " uh - huh , uh - huh "
Professor D: Actually , I think I 've done it a fair number of times today .
PhD B: Yeah .
Professor D: But .
PhD B: There 's a lot of head - nodding , in this
Grad H: Um .
PhD G: Yeah .
Grad H: Yep , we need to put trackers on it .
PhD A: In in the two - person PhD E: Yeah , yeah , yeah .
Postdoc F: He could , he could .
PhD G: Plus plus plus the Yeah . So so actually , um That 's in part because the nodding , if you have visual contact , the nodding has the same function , but on the phone , in Switchboard you you that wouldn't work . So so you need to use the backchannel .
Grad H: Yeah , you don't have it . Your mike is PhD A: So , in the two - person conversations , when there 's backchannel , is there a great deal of overlap in the speech ?
Grad H: That is an earphone , so if you just put it so it 's on your ear .
PhD A: or Cuz my impression is sometimes it happens when there 's a pause ,
PhD B: Yes .
Grad H: There you go .
PhD B: Yeah .
Postdoc F: E for example .
Grad H: Thank you .
PhD A: you know , like you you get a lot of backchannel , when somebody 's pausing
PhD B: Yes . Right .
Postdoc F: She 's doing that .
PhD B: Sorry , what were you saying ?
PhD A: It 's hard to do both , huh ? 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 PhD B: Oh .
PhD A: and a lot of times , the first person actually stops talking and then there 's a backchannel and then they start up again , and so I 'm wondering about h I just wonder how much overlap there is . Is there a lot ?
PhD 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 . So all you 're missing is some last syllables or something or the last word or some highly predictable words .
PhD A: Mmm . Mm - hmm .
PhD B: So technically , it 's an overlap .
PhD A: But maybe a just a small overlap ?
PhD B: But you know , from information flow point of view it 's not an overlap in the predictable information .
PhD E: More , yeah .
Grad H: It 'd be interesting if we could do prediction .
PhD A: I was just thinking more in terms of alignment , alignment overlap .
PhD B: Yeah .
Grad H: Language model prediction of overlap , that would be really interesting .
PhD G: So  so PhD B: Well , that 's exactly , exactly why we wanted to study the precise timing of overlaps ins in uh Switchboard ,
Professor D: Yeah .
PhD G: Right .
Grad H: Right .
PhD B: say , because there 's a lot of that .
PhD G: So so here 's a here 's a first interesting labeling task . 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 .
Grad H: Mm - hmm . Let 's pick a different word .
PhD E: Yeah .
PhD G: Uh , that that might be an interesting , um problem to look at .
PhD A: Hostile takeovers .
PhD E: Yeah .
Professor D: Yeah .
PhD E: Yeah . Yeah .
Postdoc F: Well , I mean you could do that . I ju I I think that in this meeting I really had the feeling that wasn't happening , that the hostile hostile type . These were these were benevolent types , as people finishing each other 's sentences , and stuff .
PhD G: OK .
PhD B: Mm - hmm .
PhD 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 .
Grad H: Trying to get the floor .
Professor D: Yeah .
PhD G: And so it 's not against the person who talks first because actually we 're all waiting for that person to finish . But they all want to be next .
Professor 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 .
PhD G: Right .
PhD A: I wonder what determines who gets the floor ?
Professor D: But .
Postdoc F: Yeah , I agree . I agree .
PhD A: I mean Postdoc F: Well , there are various things , you you have the Professor D: Uh a vote vote in Florida .
Grad H: It 's been studied a lot .
Professor D: Yeah .
PhD E: Voting for Professor 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 .
PhD G: Seniority .
Professor D: But . But . Um . 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 .
Grad H: Ach .
Professor 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 . Right ? I mean we most of our meetings are uh , meetings currently with say five , six , seven , eight people 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 ?
Postdoc F: That 's a control . Well , it seems like there are two possibilities there , 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 . It depends on what you 're after , of course , but It seems like that would be more a case of the control condition , compared to , uh an experimental condition , with more than two .
Grad H: Mm - hmm .
Professor 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 ,
Postdoc F: Mm - hmm .
Professor D: and , um If you had two people meeting in this kind of circumstance then you 'd still have the visuals . You wouldn't have that difference also that you have in the say , in Switchboard data . Uh
Postdoc F: Mm - hmm . Yeah , I 'm just thinking that 'd be more like a c control condition .
Professor D: Yeah .
Postdoc F: Mm - hmm .
PhD E: Yeah .
Grad H: Well , but from the acoustic point of view , it 's all good .
PhD E: Is the same .
Professor D: Yeah , acoustic is fine , but PhD 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 .
PhD B: Well , I was thinking you should be able to do this from the acoustics , on the close - talking mikes ,
Grad H: Yep .
Professor D: Yeah .
Grad H: Well , that 's the that was my my status report ,
PhD B: right ?
Postdoc F: You 've been working on that .
PhD B: Right , I mean Adam was PhD E: Yeah .
Postdoc F: Yeah .
Grad H: so  Once we 're done with this stuff discussing ,
PhD B: right . I mean , not as well as what I mean , you wouldn't be able to have any kind of typology , obviously ,
Professor D: Yeah .
PhD B: but you 'd get some rough statistics .
Grad H: Mm - hmm .
PhD B: So .
Professor D: But what what do you think about that ? Do you think that would be useful ? I 'm just thinking that as an action item of whether we should try to record some two - person meetings or something .
PhD B: I guess my my first comment was , um only that um we should n not attribute overlaps only to meetings , but maybe that 's obvious , maybe everybody knew that ,
Professor D: Yeah .
PhD B: but that in normal conversation with two people there 's an awful lot of the same kinds of overlap , 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 ,
Professor D: Mm - hmm .
PhD B: you know , because now you can have five people trying to grab the turn , but pretty quickly there 're they back off and you go back to this sort of only one person at a time with one person interrupting at a time .
Professor D: Mm - hmm .
PhD B: So , I don't know . To answer your question I it I don't think it 's crucial to have controls but I think it 's worth recording all the meetings we can .
Grad H: Can .
PhD B: So , um you know .
Professor D: Well , OK .
PhD E: Yeah .
PhD G: I I have an idea .
PhD B: D I wouldn't not record a two - person meeting just because it only has two people .
Grad H: Right .
PhD G: Could we Could we , um we have have in the past and I think continue will continue to have a fair number of uh phone conference calls .
Professor D: Uh - huh .
PhD 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 .
Grad H: Yeah , we talked about this repeatedly .
PhD G: So , um PhD B: Can we actually record ?
Grad H: It just seems like that 's a very different thing than what we 're doing .
Professor D: Uh Well , we 'll have to set up for it .
PhD B: I mean physically can we record the o the other Professor D: Yeah . Well , we 're not really set up for it to do that . But .
PhD G: Or , this is getting a little extravagant , we could put up some kind of blinds or something to  to remove , uh visual contact .
Professor D: Yeah .
PhD C: Yeah .
Grad H: Barriers !
PhD B: That 's what they did on Map Task , you know , this Map Task corpus ? They ran exactly the same pairs of people with and without visual cues and it 's quite interesting .
Professor D: Well , we we record this meeting so regularly it wouldn't be that I mean a little strange .
Grad H: OK , we can record , but no one can look at each other .
PhD B: Well , we could just put b blindfolds on .
PhD C: Yeah .
PhD G: Well y no you f
Grad H: Close your eyes .
Postdoc F: Blindf
PhD G: Yeah , Yeah .
Grad H: Turn off the lights .
PhD B: and we 'd take a picture of everybody sitting here with blindfolds . That would Professor D: Oh , th that was the other thing , weren't we gonna take a picture at the beginning of each of these meetings ?
Grad H: Um , what I had thought we were gonna do is just take pictures of the whiteboards . rather than take pictures of the meeting .
Postdoc F: Well , linguistic Grad H: And , uh Professor D: Yes .
Postdoc F: Yeah . Linguistic anthropologists would would suggest it would be useful to also take a picture of the meeting .
Professor D: There 's a head nodding here vigorously , yeah .
PhD A: Why why do we want to have a picture of the meeting ?
PhD B: Ee - you mean , transc no Postdoc F: The because you get then the spatial relationship of the speakers .
PhD E: Yeah Yeah .
Postdoc F: And that could be
PhD G: Well , you could do that by just noting on the enrollment sheet the  the seat number .
PhD E: Yeah .
Grad H: Seat number , that 's a good idea . I 'll do that .
PhD E: Yeah .
Grad H: I 'll do that on the next set of forms .
PhD E: Yeah .
PhD G: So you 'd number them somehow .
PhD E: Is possible to get information from the rhythmic f from the ge , eh uh , files .
Grad H: I finally remembered to put , uh put native language on the newer forms .
PhD A: We can can't you figure it out from the mike number ?
Grad H: No .
PhD A: OK .
Grad H: The wireless ones . And even the jacks , I mean , I 'm sitting here and the jack is over in front of you .
PhD A: Oh .
PhD B: But probably from these you could 've {comment} infer it .
PhD G: Yeah , but It 's it would be trivial Grad H: It would be another task .
PhD B: It would be a research task .
Grad H: Having having ground tu truth would be nice , so seat number would be good .
PhD A: You know where you could get it ?
PhD B: Yeah , yeah .
PhD A: Beam - forming during the digit uh stuff .
PhD E: Yeah .
Grad H: So I 'm gonna put little labels on all the chairs with the seat number .
PhD C: Mm - hmm .
Grad H: That 's a good idea .
PhD B: But you have to keep the chairs in the same pla like here .
PhD G: Not the chairs . The chairs are Chairs are movable .
Grad H: But , uh PhD G: Put them  Like , put them on the table where they PhD E: The chair {comment} Yeah .
Grad H: Yep .
PhD C: Yeah .
Grad H: Yep .
Postdoc F: But you know , they the s the linguistic anthropologists would say it would be good to have a digital picture anyway ,
PhD A: Just remembered a joke .
Postdoc F: because you get a sense also of posture . Posture , and we could like , you know , block out the person 's face or whatever
PhD G: What people were wearing .
Grad H: Yeah .
PhD B: The fashion statement .
Postdoc F: but  but , you know , these are important cues ,
PhD G: Oh , Andreas was PhD A: How big their heads are .
Postdoc F: I mean the the how a person is sitting is Professor D: But if you just f But from one picture , I don't know that you really get that .
PhD G: Yeah . Andreas was wearing that same old sweater again .
Professor D: Right ? You 'd want a video for that , I think .
Postdoc F: It 'd be better than nothing , is is i Just from a single picture I think you can tell some aspects .
PhD E: A video , yeah .
Professor D: Think so ?
Postdoc 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 .
PhD G: And And Professor D: Hmm .
PhD G: Yeah . And and Morgan had that funny hair again .
Postdoc F: Yeah . {comment} Well , I mean you black out the that part .
Grad H: Hmm .
Postdoc F: But it 's just , you know , the the body
PhD A: He agreed .
Postdoc F: you know ?
Grad 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 .
Postdoc F: Yeah .
Grad H: and it 's somewhat coincidental . I 'm sitting here so that I can run into the room if the hardware starts , you know , catching fire or something .
PhD G: Oh , no , you you just like to be in charge , that 's why you 're sitting Grad H: I just want to be at the head of the table .
PhD G: Yeah .
Grad H: Take control .
Professor D: Speaking of taking control , you said you had some research to talk about .
Postdoc F: Yeah . Yeah .