Vocal behavior in the dyadic interactions of preadolescent and early adolescent friends and acquaintances

Adolescence, Fall, 2002 by Stanley Feldstein, Tiffany Field

A vocalization is a continuous utterance containing no silence as long as 250 msec (silences less than 250 msec are attributable to stop consonants in speech and are bridged by our A/D converter). Joint silence is classified in terms of its outcome. A pause is a joint silence greater than 250 msec bounded by the vocalizations of the speaker who holds the turn. A switching pause is a joint silence greater than 250 msec initiated by the speaker who holds the turn, but terminated by the other speaker, who thereby gains the turn. In relatively unconstrained dialogues, it is assigned, for theoretical and empirical reasons, to the speaker whose turn it terminates.

Similarly, simultaneous (joint) speech is that uttered by the person who does not hold the turn during a vocalization of the person who does and it, too, is classified in terms of its outcome. Noninterruptive simultaneous speech (NSS) is a segment of speech that begins and ends while the person who holds the turn vocalizes continuously. Interruptive simultaneous speech is part of a speech segment that begins while the person who holds the turn is vocalizing but continues when he or she stops. Only that part of the segment uttered coactively is considered interruptive simultaneous speech. The trailing portion, inasmuch as it is then a unilateral utterance, marks the beginning of the turn for the person who initiated the interruption and is, therefore, considered his or her vocalization.

The AVTA system computes, for turns and each of the vocal states, the average duration for the entire interaction session but also the average duration for every five seconds of the interaction. The latter computation is for the purpose of subjecting the data to time-series analyses.

RESULTS

Frequencies and Durations

The descriptive statistics of the states for the interactions studied are presented in Tables 1 and 2. Separate factorial ANOVAs were used to compare speaking-turn frequencies and durations, the vocal-state frequencies and durations of the pairs of friends and acquaintances, and their gender and dyad gender (whether same-gender or cross-gender). The results provide no evidence (with regard to frequencies and durations) that gender or dyad gender (same or mixed), as a main effect, differentiated the two groups for any of the vocal states. Frequency of turns, however, yielded au F ratio that, although only bordering on significance, F(1, 108) = 3.53, p = .06, [euro] = .15, tended to suggest that the girls used more turns than did the boys.

The participants' use of interruptive and noninterruptive simultaneous speech yielded significant differences. The boys engaged in more frequent interruptive and noninterruptive simultaneous speech (ISS and NSS, respectively) when they were with acquaintances than when they were with friends whereas the girls engaged in more interruptive and noninterruptive simultaneous speech when they were with friends than when they were with acquaintances, F(1), 108) = 17.05, p = .00, [euro] = .36, and F(1, 108) = 14.31, p = .00, [euro] = .33, respectively. Figure 2 graphs the influence of gender by dyad type on ISS and Figure 3 graphs the same type of interaction for NSS.