In this talk, I will focus on speech as a component of conversation success, presenting results from a series of studies. I will begin by exploring how speech in conversations differs from speech in speech-in-noise tests, highlighting interactive elements such as turn-taking coordination and conversational repairs. I will then discuss the factors contributing to conversation success as perceived by people with normal and impaired hearing, highlighting the roles of speech and the speaker’s contributions to successful interactions.

Maintaining conversation success can be particularly challenging in noisy environments, especially for individuals with impaired hearing, who face additional barriers. I will present findings from a lab-based multiparty interaction experiment that investigated how background noise, hearing loss, and hearing aids influence self-reported perceptions of conversation success. Then, I will give examples of behaviours, including vocal activity and head movements, that are linked to interlocutors' ratings of conversation success.

Finally, I will summarise results from a third-party observer study showing how multimodal input shapes perceptions of conversation success. Observers watched a series of successful and unsuccessful conversations with and without audio input. Their assessments provide a unique perspective on how conversational cues impact perceptions of conversation success.