Inter‐Turn Silences: Duration, Interpretation and Mechanisms

ABSTRACT Inter‐turn silences are silences that occur at turn transitions in conversation. They mark the gap between the end of one speaker's turn and the beginning of the next speaker's turn. We provide a brief review of the literature on inter‐turn silences. The literature suggests that inter‐turn silences tend to be short (< 1 s in duration), with a large proportion of the silences being less than half a second in length. A range of cultural and contextual factors affect the length of inter‐turn silences. Interlocutors have expectations about the lengths of inter‐turn silences, and silences that are longer than expected tend to be given a negative interpretation (e.g., assumptions of dishonesty, disinterest, or disagreement). We suggest that prediction‐based accounts of language processing can provide a reasonable starting point for understanding both the variation that exists in the duration of inter‐turn silences and the way that the silences are interpreted. We also suggest that theories of time perception could be used to better understand the interpretation of inter‐turn silences as well as potential brain regions involved in both timing and turn transitions.