Conversation normally starts with an alerting signal, so as to engage the attention of the intended collocutor. Absence of the alerting signal conveys that this is not going to be a conversation.

Conversation normally includes listening pauses, the absence of which indicates that this is not a conversation: “The lady doth protest too much, methinks.”

Pseudo-conversation is when the speaker’s intent is to hear his or her own words spoken in the presence of an unresponsive adult. There is no alerting signal to engage the listener, and there are no pauses for listening. When desperate, speakers talk while breathing in, or talk at pets or children. Pseudo-conversation is an example of regression.

The presence of the unresponsive adult activates the speaker’s sensory nerves, specifically the geniculate nuclei of the thalami and layer four of the temporal and occipital cerebral cortices, so that a memory is formed of the monologue having been delivered in the outside world, and not just in fantasy.
Pseudo-conversations are motivated by reduction in an uncomfortable degree of arousal, by evacuation of the residual reverberations of the day into someone else so as to get a good night’s sleep, and by the anxiety carrier state, when anxieties are given to someone else without deliberation; these are examples of a parasite entering a host, when the parasite evacuates its waste into the space created by the host, who may be motivated by sexual promise.
Other motives for pseudo-conversations are thinking out loud, so as to hear oneself organise one’s thoughts, hearing oneself say certain words by way of self-reassurance, loneliness, competitiveness, enjoyment of being the centre of attention, and causing annoyance in the inhibited listener.
Pseudo-conversations may be reciprocal, when two or more parties take it in turns to talk without interruption for several minutes; this affords the benefits of pseudo-conversations predictably, which is biologically advantageous in requiring less effort than the random formats.
An interviewer may be faced with an interviewee who wishes to conduct a pseudo-conversation: interviewers may not block pseudo-conversational responses, sometimes by choice. Experienced interviewers, for example barristers, jitter their questions, so as to derail rehearsed responses.
Bureaucratic pseudo-conversations often contain avoidance of the present by recall of the past or by plans for the future; attribution of blame to someone distant in time and place, who cannot be interviewed easily to challenge the attribution; and intense focus on minor issues to the exclusion of major issues.
Over months or years, persistent pseudo-conversations lead to errors of judgement, because the only person one has really listened to has been oneself: parasitism follows.

Pseudo-conversation is not to be confused with defensive verbiage, whereby pressure of talk is used to block interventions by an unwanted collocutor.

Pseudo-conversation is not to be confused with implicature, in which a meaning is implied beyond the literal sense of what is stated.

Networking shares with pseudo-conversation the preferred passivity of the supposed listener, given that the intended target of the utterance is a third party within earshot.

Pseudo-conversation can be defended if the intended host mimics the human in parasitic mode, which results in a Nash equilibrium.

Responses to pseudo-conversations include embarrassment, irritability, and the Doppler effect, due to movement away from the sound source.

Pseudo-conversation is a risk factor for autism. There is a lack of the pauses which would convey to the infant that the carer is inhibiting the carer so as to accommodate and develop the infant.