Fact · Voice and AI
208milliseconds
Across ten languages, the mean gap between one speaker finishing a turn and the next speaker starting was 208 milliseconds.
Checked against its source on October 16, 2026
In the source's own words
“The mean response offset for the full dataset is +208 ms”
Universals and cultural variation in turn-taking in conversation, Tanya Stivers et al., Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 2009, Results.
Open the original (DOI 10.1073/pnas.0903616106)- What it measures
- The study timed question and answer pairs in recorded conversations in ten languages. Individual languages ranged from +7 ms (Japanese) to +469 ms (Danish).
- What it does not show
- Question and answer turns in informal conversation, not every kind of speech. Mean timing says nothing about the pause a particular listener tolerates from a machine.