Listeners' uses of um and uh in speech comprehension.
Despite their frequency in conversational talk, little is known about how ums and uhs affect listeners' on-line processing of spontaneous speech. Two studies of ums and uhs in English and Dutch reveal that hearing an uh has a beneficial effect on listeners' ability to recognize words in upcoming speech, but that hearing an um has neither a beneficial nor a detrimental effect. The results suggest that um and uh are different from one another and support the hypothesis that uh is a signal of short upcoming delay and um is a signal of a long upcoming delay.
Fox Tree
J E
JE
Psychology Department, University of California, Santa Cruz 95064, USA. foxtree@cats.ucsc.edu
D003071:Cognition; D006801:Humans; D007802:Language; D011930:Reaction Time; D013067:Speech Perception; D014705:Verbal Behavior