Previous studies of psychotherapy interview excerpts demonstrated an intercorrelation among 3 indicators of emotional disturbance speech rate, filled pause ("ah" and repetition) and non-purposive body movements. The intercorrelation could be accounted for in 2 ways: that all 3 variables were directly affected by the speaker''s psychological state, or that speech rate increased during emotional disturbance and the other 2 variables increased automatically as a function of speech rate. As an experimental test, subjects were instructed to speak normally for 3 minutes, then to speak rapidly for 3 minutes. If filled pause and movement had increased automatically with speech rate then the second would have been a tenable hypothesis. The results did not support the second hypothesis. A second line of inquiry demonstrated that it is possible to increase filled pause by inducing cautious syntactic selection, but that body movement does not show a corresponding increase.