PLoS ONE: Why Um Helps Auditory Word Recognition: The Temporal Delay Hypothesis - 2 views
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Ryan Catalani on 26 Jul 11"Our main conclusion is that delays in word onset facilitate word recognition, and that such facilitation is independent of the type of delay. ... Our findings support the perhaps counterintuitive conclusion that fillers like um can sometimes help (rather than hinder) listeners to identify spoken words. But critically, the data show that the same is true for silent pauses and pauses filled with artificially generated tones. "