How is your feedback perceived? An experimental study of anticipated and delayed conversational feedback

Abstract

This article presents a different experiment examining the impact of feedback timing on its perception. Dialog sequences, featuring a main speaker's utterance followed by a listener's feedback, were extracted from spontaneous conversations. The original feedback instances were manipulated to be produced earlier, up to 1.5 s in advance, or to be delayed, up to 2 s later. Participants evaluated the feedback acceptability and engagement level of the listener. The findings reveal that 76% of the time feedback remains acceptable regardless of the delay. However, engagement decreases after a 1-s delay while no consistent effect is observed for feedback anticipation.