Villegas, J. 1 , Aubanel, V. 1 & Cooke, M. 1, 2
1 Ikerbasque (Basque Science Foundation), Spain
2 Language and Speech Laboratory, Universidad del Pais Vasco, Spain
This study aims to better understand the changes in foreground conversations induced by background conversations, particularly modifications in the temporal domain including overlaps between foreground and background speech. Understanding the strategies that humans adopt to orally communicate with a peer in the presence of competing dialogs could give some useful insights for developing improved human--computer interfaces, delivering aural information more effectively, etc. In comparison to the acoustic effects of a background dialog in a conversation, our knowledge on background conversation interactional effects is rather limited. In experiments involving simultaneous conversations, we have found intensity and fundamental frequency increments, speech rate decrements, and other changes associated with the Lombard effect in speech produced in the presence of competing talkers. Interactional effects such as greater number of interruptions and dysfluencies, and less accurate turn taking were also seen. Unlike previous studies, we observed no reduction in overlap between foreground and background speech. We hypothesise that this unexpected result could be explained by visual cues used by the subjects during the conversation, methodological differences (i.e., as opposed to free conversations, previous reports focused on task-oriented experiments), stimuli differences (a single competing talker instead of a spontaneous talking pair).