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Speech pauses in speakers with and without aphasia: A usage-based approach
Sebastian Bello-Lepe1, Sabrina Mahmood2, Rosemary Varley2
1University College London, Department of Language and Cognition, London, UK; Universidad de Valparaíso, Centro de Investigación del Desarrollo en Cognición y Lenguaje, Valparaiso, Chile.
Summary
Speech pauses reveal cognitive effort. Stronger word collocations and frequent words shorten pauses, especially in individuals with aphasia (IWA), supporting usage-based language models.
Area of Science:
- Psycholinguistics
- Neurolinguistics
- Speech Production Research
Background:
- Speech pauses indicate cognitive load during language formulation.
- Previous research focused on pause duration related to grammar.
- Aphasia research shows increased word collocations in speech.
Purpose of the Study:
- To investigate how collocation strength and word frequency affect pause duration.
- To compare these effects in individuals with aphasia (IWA) and non-brain-damaged (NBD) individuals.
- To explore the role of part of speech (PoS) as a covariate.
Main Methods:
- Analysis of pause duration in comic strip narrations.
- Comparison between IWA and NBD groups.
- Statistical analysis considering collocation strength, lexical frequency, and PoS.
Main Results:
- Both groups exhibited shorter pauses for stronger collocations and more frequent content words.
- These effects were more pronounced in IWA.
- Results suggest holistic processing of strong collocations.
Conclusions:
- Strong word collocations and lexical frequency influence speech pause duration.
- Findings support usage-based models of language production in aphasia.
- These models help explain preserved and impaired language functions post-aphasia.
