Filled pauses and gestures: It's not coincidence

• Published in: Journal of psycholinguistic research 1991-01, Vol.20 (1), p.1-10
• Main Authors: Christenfeld, Nicholas, Schachter, Stanley, Bilous, Frances
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• ISSN: 0090-6905; 1573-6555
• DOI: 10.1007/BF01076916

Two studies examine the relationship between filled pauses ("uh," "ah," "er," & "um") & gestures in interruptions in the flow of speech. Observations of colloquium speakers at Columbia U (N = 18) revealed that speakers have a lower "um" rate while gesturing. A replication of this study involved coding gestures & filled pauses for undergraduates (N = 13) as they described various pictures & sounds to an experimenter. In 12 of 13 cases the rate of "um" was lower while gesturing. This effect of reduced filled pauses while gesturing held for 30 of the 31 Ss across two different speaking tasks for both experienced & inexperienced speakers of various ages. Findings suggest that filled pauses & gestures are systematically distributed in the speech flow, but they cannot specify a causal relationship between the two. A speculative suggestion is that gestures indicate that the speech apparatus has completed its search for the next word, phrase, or idea & that the speaker is ready to continue. Implications for theories of gesture & speech disfluency are discussed. 2 Tables, 25 References. Adapted from the source document