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Three-year-olds’ inferences of speakers’ mental states using disfluency in speech

Abstract

Disfluencies (i.e., pauses, insertions, repetition and replacement of words, phrases, or sentences) are common in speech. Disfluencies provide several interpretations about a speaker depending on the context. The present study examined: 1) acoustic characteristics of disfluent phrases—especially those that mark hesitation—compared to those fluent phrases with the exact same words and 2) whether 3-year-olds are able to infer a speaker’s mental states using disfluencies. The disfluent “uh” that shows speakers’ hesitation was longer and lower-pitched than the fluent “uh” that indicates speakers’ positive responses. In a food/snack offering situation, experimenter asked two adults about their preferences for the item. One answered with hesitation “uh” while the other answered fluently without hesitation. Three-year-olds reliably selected the speakers who answered without hesitation as the recipient of the offered item. It indicates that 3-year-olds are sensitive to the subtle differences in speech and utilized the hesitation marker to infer speakers’ mental states.

keywords
Submission Date
2015-10-15
Revised Date
2015-11-30
Accepted Date
2015-12-09

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