Delay disrupts the rhythm of turn-taking
Aliases: turn-taking latency · audio-video delay · network jitter
What it is
Conversational latency is the gap before one person’s audio, video, or response reaches another. It disrupts turn-taking because everyday talk uses tiny pauses, inhalation, and body lean to judge whether a turn has been yielded; under delay those signals arrive already stale.
Why it happens
Each side hears a different pause. A starts because B appears finished; B starts before A’s voice arrives; both then overlap and retreat. To avoid rudeness, people wait longer, making talk sluggish and reducing the turns taken by more cautious members. Loss and echo make it unclear whether silence means thought, surrender, or transmission failure.
Studying it
- Paradigms: manipulate one-way or round-trip delay and code overlap, pause, retreat, and speaking distribution in transcripts.
- Variables: end-to-end delay, jitter, loss, overlap, turn gap, and inclusion.
- Methodological caution: an average hides sudden jitter; record variation, not one network number.
Where it stops holding
Strict moderation, text queues, or recorded messages avoid some turn problems but sacrifice natural follow-up. Low latency cannot solve camera gaze or power-driven silence.
Applying it
- Show network quality and recommend slower turns or text when delay rises instead of silently degrading.
- Have facilitators leave a brief gap and name the next speaker.
- Give groups raise-hand, queue, and chat routes.
- Verification: audit overlap, retreat, and speaking opportunity by network condition and participant.
Related
- Same group: V5.03.1 Gaze misalignment disrupts eye contact · V5.03.3 Long video calls create distinctive fatigue
- Nearby: V5.04 Turn-taking and interruptions · V5.05 Hand raising, queues, and facilitation tools · V3.06 Consistency under network delay
- Search terms:
conversational latency·turn-taking·network jitter