A usual extreme case: Pause reports of informal spontaneous dialogue

Abstract

Native speakers (N = 49) of American English (with and without advanced fluency in German), French, and German were asked to report pauses and estimate their duration in English and German texts of informal spontaneous dialogue. In previous research, stimulus materials for pause reports have consisted of very “orderly” discourse: monologic or dialogic, but of media quality and without the overlap, laughter, extraneous noise, rapid articulation, and slang typical of informal spontaneous dialogue. Addition of these characteristics makes the task quite difficult and diminishes both accuracy (hits/possible hits) and efficiency (hits/[hits + false alarms]) of pause reports. In both English and German texts, estimates of pause duration at actual pause positions were significantly longer than those at false alarm positions where there were no actual pauses in the text. Significant differences in accuracy across language groups were limited to the German corpus; fluency in the German was associated with greater accuracy. © 1992, Psychonomic Society, Inc.. All rights reserved.