{"paper_id":"32514b31-bf71-4e7a-acc3-b8f269e9c1b7","body_text":"This is a Preprint and has not been peer reviewed. This is version 1 of this Preprint.\nYou must log in to post a comment.\nThere are no comments or no comments have been made public for this article.\nThis is a Preprint and has not been peer reviewed. This is version 1 of this Preprint.\nAdd a Comment\nYou must log in to post a comment.\nComments\nThere are no comments or no comments have been made public for this article.\nConversational turn-taking, the cooperative reciprocal exchange of short and flexible turns, is fundamental for communication and social coordination. Initially thought to be uniquely human, recent research showed some evidence of cooperative turn-taking also in other animal species. However, systematic evaluations and comparisons of turn-taking skills within and across species pose considerable challenges due to different measures applied and research foci on specific elements. Here, we build on a comparative framework resting on four key elements of human conversational turn-taking - flexibility, participation frameworks, temporal relationships, and adjacency pair-like sequences - to enable standardized and feasible annotation procedures across species and taxa. Proposed parameters are described in detail, and their operationalization is outlined through step-by-step annotation schemes and real-world examples. By understanding which elements of turn-taking are shared across different model systems and taxa and by mapping similarities and differences, this standardized “turn-taking toolkit” will aid in fostering a more biocentric perspective on the evolution of communication and gaining a better understanding of the evolutionary origins of language and cooperation.\nhttps://doi.org/10.32942/X2RD5G\nAnimal Studies, Communication, Social and Behavioral Sciences\nsocial interaction, research methods, language evolution, communication, cooperation\nPublished: 2026-03-27 21:13\nLast Updated: 2026-03-27 21:13\nCC BY Attribution 4.0 International\nConflict of interest statement:\nNone\nData and Code Availability Statement:\nData is available at https://figshare.com/s/c9fe94c30ebad0ed9c7d.\nLanguage:\nEnglish","source_license":"CC-BY-4.0","license_restricted":false}