Asymmetric listening conditions perturb verbal and nonverbal coordination dynamics during conversation
- 1Technical University of Denmark
Abstract
Human conversation depends on continuous coordination across verbal and nonverbal behaviour. Yet this coordination may become perturbed when one person experiences greater listening difficulty. Previous nonverbal joint action studies show that unequal task demands between partners can lead to complementary leader-follower dynamics, but whether similar patterns emerge during natural conversation remains unclear. We investigated how unequal listening conditions affect verbal and nonverbal coordination in 40 same-gender stranger dyads during three 10-minute face-to-face conversations. Each dyad participated in noise-free and asymmetric noise conditions, with one person exposed to speech-shaped noise at a time. Asymmetric noise reduced conversational flow and enjoyment, and shifted the balance of verbal contributions: noise-exposed participants took longer turns and contributed more speaking time, while their noise-free partners produced more backchannels. Interpersonal head-movement coordination became temporally asymmetric under noise, with movements of the noise-exposed participant more often preceding those of their partner. In contrast, interpersonal hand-movement coordination did not differ between conditions. Within individuals, hand coordination was stronger when participants themselves experienced noise than when their partner experienced noise. These findings demonstrate that perturbing one partner's auditory access affects coordination within and between individuals, revealing how unequal interaction demands produce different coordination patterns across verbal and nonverbal behaviour.
Related
- Nonverbal Cognition is Associated with Discourse Production in Persons with Aphasia: Evidence from Expository and Picture Description Tasks
- Rotational perturbation training improves muscle coordination during reactive standing balance in trained and untrained conditions in children with spastic cerebral palsy.
- Association of Care Coordination and Discontinuity With Patterns of Care and Outcomes in Childhood Cancer Survivors With Multiple Chronic Conditions: A Report From the Childhood Cancer Survivor Study
- Missed Perforated Appendicitis in a Nonverbal Patient with Autism and Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy: A Case Report.
- Beyond Words: Development and Validation of the Nonverbal Individual-Level Coding and Observation (NICO) Manual
BibTeX
@misc{he2026asymmetric,
title = {{Asymmetric listening conditions perturb verbal and nonverbal coordination dynamics during conversation}},
author = {H. He and A. Ahrens and M. Medoni and R. M. Torra and I. Konvalinka},
howpublished = {bioRxiv},
year = {2026},
month = oct,
doi = {10.64898/2026.10.19.760093},
url = {https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.10.19.760093v1},
note = {CC BY-ND},
}
RIS
TY - UNPB
TI - Asymmetric listening conditions perturb verbal and nonverbal coordination dynamics during conversation
AU - H. He
AU - A. Ahrens
AU - M. Medoni
AU - R. M. Torra
AU - I. Konvalinka
PY - 2026
DA - 2026/10/19
PB - bioRxiv
DO - 10.64898/2026.10.19.760093
UR - https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.10.19.760093v1
AB - Human conversation depends on continuous coordination across verbal and nonverbal behaviour. Yet this coordination may become perturbed when one person experiences greater listening difficulty. Previous nonverbal joint action studies show that unequal task demands between partners can lead to complementary leader-follower dynamics, but whether similar patterns emerge during natural conversation remains unclear. We investigated how unequal listening conditions affect verbal and nonverbal coordination in 40 same-gender stranger dyads during three 10-minute face-to-face conversations. Each dyad participated in noise-free and asymmetric noise conditions, with one person exposed to speech-shaped noise at a time. Asymmetric noise reduced conversational flow and enjoyment, and shifted the balance of verbal contributions: noise-exposed participants took longer turns and contributed more speaking time, while their noise-free partners produced more backchannels. Interpersonal head-movement coordination became temporally asymmetric under noise, with movements of the noise-exposed participant more often preceding those of their partner. In contrast, interpersonal hand-movement coordination did not differ between conditions. Within individuals, hand coordination was stronger when participants themselves experienced noise than when their partner experienced noise. These findings demonstrate that perturbing one partner's auditory access affects coordination within and between individuals, revealing how unequal interaction demands produce different coordination patterns across verbal and nonverbal behaviour.
ER -