Conversation demands attention. Speakers must call words to mind, listeners must make sense of them, and both together must negotiate this flow of information, all in fractions of a second. We used large language models to study how this works in a large-scale dataset of English-language conversation, the CANDOR corpus. We provide a new estimate of the information density of unstructured conversation, of approximately 13 bits/second, and find significant effects associated with the cognitive load of both retrieving, and presenting, that information. We also reveal a role for backchannels -- the brief yeahs, uh-huhs, and mhmms that listeners provide -- in regulating the production of novelty: the lead-up to a backchannel is associated with declining information rate, while speech downstream rebounds to previous rates. Our results provide new insights into long-standing theories of how we respond to fluctuating demands on cognitive resources, and how we negotiate those demands in partnership with others.

翻译：对话需要持续的关注。说话者必须快速调动词汇，听者必须理解其含义，双方还需共同协商信息流动，这一切都在瞬间完成。我们利用大语言模型研究了大规模英语对话数据集CANDOR中这一过程的运作机制。我们提供了非结构化对话信息密度的新估算值——约13比特/秒，并发现信息检索与呈现过程中的认知负荷对信息密度有显著影响。我们还揭示了反馈信号（听者提供的简短"yeah"、"uh-huh"和"mhm"）在调控新颖性产生中的作用：反馈信号出现前信息速率呈下降趋势，而后续话语会恢复到先前水平。我们的研究结果为阐释人类如何应对认知资源动态需求波动，以及如何与他人协作协商这些需求提供了新见解。