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The effect of filled pauses on the processing of the surface form and the establishment of causal connections during the comprehension of spoken expository discourse

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Abstract

The purpose of this study was to examine the effect of filled pauses (uh) on the verification of words and the establishment of causal connections during the comprehension of spoken expository discourse. With this aim, we asked Spanish-speaking students to listen to excerpts of interviews with writers, and to perform a word-verification task and a question-answering task on causal connectivity. There were two versions of the excerpts: filled pause present and filled pause absent. Results indicated that filled pauses increased verification times for words that preceded them, but did not make a difference on response times to questions on causal connectivity. The results suggest that, as signals of delay, filled pauses create a break with surface information, but they do not have the same effect on the establishment of meaningful connections.

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Acknowledgments

This research was supported by the National Scientific and Technical Research Council of Argentina (Multiannual Research Project No. 11220100100121). The authors wish to thank the reviewers for their helpful comments, and Julieta de Simone for her help in providing reliability ratings.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Psychology, National Scientific and Technical Research Council, Gral. Juan Lavalle 2353, C1052AAA, Buenos Aires, Argentina

    Jazmín Cevasco

  2. Department of Education and Child Studies, University of Leiden, Leiden, The Netherlands

    Paul van den Broek

Authors
  1. Jazmín Cevasco
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  2. Paul van den Broek
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Jazmín Cevasco.

Additional information

Handling Editor: Ekaterina Shutova (University of Cambridge).

Reviewers: Scott Fraundorf (University of Pittsburgh), Jean Fox Tree (University of California at Santa Cruz), Jesse Sparks (Northwestern University, Evanston).

Appendix

Appendix

Example Excerpts of Interviews Parsed in Statements with Target Sentences and Target Words in the Filled Pause Presence Versions (Translated from Spanish)

1

Author 1:

Journalistic writing differs completely from writing novels.

Journalistic writers are always moved by momentary passions,

Today it can be a religious cause,

tomorrow the robbery of a bank,

the day after tomorrow the assassination of a historic figure,

Filled Pause Present Version:

and in the end they are always anthologists of short stories, uh.

Filled Pause Absent Version:

and in the end they are always anthologists of short stories.

TARGET WORD

anthologists

TARGET STATEMENT

Journalistic writers are moved by momentary passions

2.

Author 2:

Writing involves physical sensations that the writer learns to identify.

This is not usually taught or discussed when you take writing classes.

Writers are always taught to consider what they think about a text,

when writing is about experiencing emotions with the body above everything else.

It’s not that critical or interpretative analyses should be ruled out,

Filled Pause Present Version:

but they should not be the center or main focus of the writing process, uh.

Filled Pause Absent Version:

but they should not be the center or main focus of the writing process.

TARGET WORD:

focus

TARGET STATEMENT:

Writing is about experiencing emotions with the body above everything else.

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Cevasco, J., van den Broek, P. The effect of filled pauses on the processing of the surface form and the establishment of causal connections during the comprehension of spoken expository discourse. Cogn Process 17, 185–194 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10339-016-0755-8

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10339-016-0755-8

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