Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society

Whereas adults exchange conversational turns very rapidly, children often respond after long gaps. However, it hasbeen proposed that the infrastructure necessary to take turns develops in infancy. Why are children slow to respond to turns?Adults’ turn-taking skills, it has been argued, rely on an ability to both predict when the current turn will end and prepare aresponse as soon as possible. In two experiments, we ask how these two abilities (prediction and early preparation) develop.Adults and 3-to-5-year-olds answered yes/no questions while playing an iPad-based maze game. Distributional analysis ofanswer latencies suggest that (i) neither children nor adults rely on fine-grained predictions of turn duration and (ii) bothchildren and adults use predictions about turn content to prepare their answer early. In sum, by the age of three, childrenalready have the cognitive architecture necessary to take turns successfully. ,