The Predictability of Words in Context and the Length of Pauses in Speech

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Abstract
Fluency and hesitation in spontaneous speech have previously been shown to be symptomatic of variations in word transition probability. The purpose of the present experiment was to corroborate this conclusion by evidence demonstrating the influence of transition probability (amount of information) on selective behaviour stimulated in an experimental situation. An experiment in sentence completion was designed in such a way as to recreate the conditions for word selection in sentences. As a result word transition probability was shown to be related not only to incidence but also to the length of hesitation pauses within sentences. The completion of gaps substituted for words that had originally been preceded by pauses required a significantly longer period of hesitation than the completion of gaps substituted for words which had been uttered fluently. A relation was thus shown to exist between periods of hesitation before verbalisation in different persons performing different operations within the same linguistic setting. The conditions under which this relation has been shown to hold have been found to be those of successful anticipation of the original speaker's intentions.

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