Abstract
A total of 55 native speakers of English or German reported occurrence and estimated duration of pauses in both an English and a German performance of an excerpt from Hamlet. A significantly higher percentage of correct reports for the German than for the English performance reflected a slower articulation rate and longer mean duration of actual pauses in the German performance. A significant interaction revealed a much higher percentage of correct reports by native speakers of German for the German performance, but only a negligibly higher percentage by native speakers of English for the English performance. False positive reports of the English performance were more numerous than those of the German performance. Duration estimates of women were consistently longer than those of men for the English performance only. Results are interpreted in terms of a theory of temporal organization of language use.
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Gardner, J.C., McMillan, H.S., Townsend-Handscomb, D. et al. Reporting pauses in dramatic dialogue. Bull. Psychon. Soc. 28, 167–170 (1990). https://doi.org/10.3758/BF03333996
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.3758/BF03333996