&gt; I am not so sure how universal this is if it varies between 7ms and 470ms, the article says &quot;there is variation but it&#x27;s minuscule&quot;, to me a two-order of magnitude variation is all but small.<p>Agreed completely.  Given the scale, and the mention that the average conversational segment lasts 2 seconds, 7-470ms seems like a major difference.<p>It also doesn&#x27;t seem like &quot;the minimum human response time to anything&quot;, as the article quotes, if it has that much variation.  Humans across all cultures can react far faster than 200ms.<p>&gt; And growing up in Europe and moving to North America I can definitely feel that the &quot;polite&quot; amount to pause in a conversation here feels way longer, it might be small in terms of milliseconds, but if you are used to, say, 50ms, having to pause for 200ms is very, very noticeable<p>I&#x27;ve had the same experience in reverse: if you&#x27;ve come to expect longer conversational pauses, short ones give the conversation a very different tone.<p>And on the flip side, the necessary pause can grow noticeably shorter between people who know each other very well.