Conversations involve a series of complex tasks that rapidly follow each other and sometimes overlap. Speakers need to retrieve words from memory and combine them into sentences; at the same time, listeners need to segment the incoming stream of sounds into individual words, reconstruct their meaning, and – sometimes – preparing a response and uttering it at the right time. Considering the complex set of processes at the basis of everyday conversations, why do they look so effortless?

In her doctoral dissertation, Federica Bartolozzi carried out a series of behavioral and electrophysiological experiments to assess whether conversation demands can be eased by repetition priming, e.g., the tendency to repeat previously heard or produced words. While the results did not allow to provide a conclusive answer to this question, they highlighted the need to implement further studies in settings that closely resemble every-day conversations.