Characteristics of pausing in normal, fast and cluttered speech

One of the main symptoms of cluttering is atypical pausing. However, there is little information about what this atypical pausing means, because typical speakers also have pauses not only at syntactic boundaries, but also within syntactic structures, and even within words. The aim of this study is to analyse how pausing strategies of persons who clutter (PWCs) differ from pausing strategies of normal speakers and speakers with exceptionally rapid speech (ERSs). Results show that there is a difference between the groups in the frequency and/or duration of pauses and the place of their occurrences. ERSs have less and longer pauses than PWCs and control speakers. There is difference between PWCs and control speakers only in the duration of pauses. The results contribute to the assessment, diagnosis, and therapy of cluttering.