# EchoChain: A Full-Duplex Benchmark for State-Update Reasoning Under Interruptions

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2604.16456 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2604.16456/

## Key facts

- Cited by 5 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 11 of its 14 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 8 Apr 2026.

## Builds on (most cited first, 11 of 11)

- [Challenging BIG-Bench Tasks and Whether Chain-of-Thought Can Solve Them](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2210.09261/) (2022)
- [AudioBench: A Universal Benchmark for Audio Large Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2406.16020/) (2024)
- [Full-Duplex-Bench: A Benchmark to Evaluate Full-duplex Spoken Dialogue Models on Turn-taking Capabilities](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.04721/) (2025)
- [SpokenWOZ: A Large-Scale Speech-Text Benchmark for Spoken Task-Oriented Dialogue Agents](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2305.13040/) (2023)
- [Full-Duplex-Bench v1.5: Evaluating Overlap Handling for Full-Duplex Speech Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2507.23159/) (2025)
- [Full-Duplex-Bench-v2: A Multi-Turn Evaluation Framework for Duplex Dialogue Systems with an Automated Examiner](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2510.07838/) (2025)
- [FD-Bench: A Full-Duplex Benchmarking Pipeline Designed for Full Duplex Spoken Dialogue Systems](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2507.19040/) (2025)
- [Audio MultiChallenge: A Multi-Turn Evaluation of Spoken Dialogue Systems on Natural Human Interaction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2512.14865/) (2025)
- [Can Speech LLMs Think while Listening?](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2510.07497/) (2025)
- [FLEXI: Benchmarking Full-duplex Human-LLM Speech Interaction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2509.22243/) (2025)
- [MTalk-Bench: Evaluating Speech-to-Speech Models in Multi-Turn Dialogues via Arena-style and Rubrics Protocols](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2508.18240/) (2025)

## Built on by (most cited first, 5 of 5)

- [DuplexWorld: Can voice agents help you get through the day?](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2608.10716/) (2026)
- [Beyond Oracle Communication: Benchmarking Interactive Intent Alignment Under Miscommunication and Evolving User Intent](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2609.38604/) (2026)
- [When Patients Cut In: Extending Clinical Conversational AI Safety to Interruptions](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2608.29241/) (2026)
- [Continue, Adapt, or Yield: In-Turn Adaptation to Overlapping Speech in Full-Duplex Agents](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2609.13117/) (2026)
- [Prompts versus Rules: Auditing and Controlling Speech Naturalness Behaviors in Voice User Simulators](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2610.11015/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Real-time voice assistants must revise task state when users interrupt mid-response, but existing spoken-dialog benchmarks largely evaluate turn-based interaction and miss this failure mode. We introduce EchoChain, a controlled benchmark for evaluating full-duplex state-update reasoning under mid-speech interruptions. EchoChain identifies three recurring failure patterns in post-interruption continuations: contextual inertia, interruption amnesia, and objective displacement. The benchmark generates scenario-driven conversations and injects interruptions at a standardized point relative to assistant speech onset, enabling controlled cross-model comparison. In a paired half-duplex control, total failures drop by 40.2% relative to interrupted runs, indicating that many errors are driven by state-update reasoning under interruption rather than task difficulty alone. Across evaluated real-time voice models, no system exceeds a 50% pass rate, showing substantial room for improvement in mid-generation state revision. EchoChain provides a reproducible benchmark for diagnosing state-update reasoning failures in full-duplex voice interaction.