Influence of Role-Switching on Phonetic Convergence in Conversation

The current study examined phonetic convergence when talkers alternated roles during conversational interaction. The talkers completed a map navigation task in which they alternated instruction Giver and Receiver roles across multiple map pairs. Previous studies found robust effects of the role of a talker on phonetic convergence, and it was hypothesized that role-switching would either reduce the impact of role or elicit alternating patterns of role-induced conversational dominance and accommodation. In contrast to the hypothesis, the initial role assignments induced a pattern of conversational dominance that persisted throughout the interaction in terms of the amount of time spent talkingOriginal Givers dominated amount of time talking consistently, even when they acted as Receivers. These results indicate that conversational dominance does not necessarily follow nominal role when roles alternate, and that talkers are influenced by initial role assignment when making acousticphonetic adjustments in their speech.