Influence of Duration and Location of Pauses on Comprehension of a Temporarily Ambiguous Utterance in Adults

Despite the important influence of prosody on comprehension, it remains unclear how the individual parameters of prosody contribute to the process. Therefore, this study examined the magnitude of one prosodic cue, duration of the pause, that precipitates comprehension when the pause is located either early or late in an ambiguous phrase. Adults between the ages of 20 and 40 years (men: M = 27.9, SD = 4.1, women: M = 26.2, SD = 3.7) listened to a series of phrases and made a decision regarding the meaning of each phrase. Analysis of variance for repeated measures yielded main effects of location and duration of pause with an interaction of location by duration. When the pause was located early in the phrase, a longer pause was needed before adults selected the correct meaning. However, when the pause was located later in the phrase, a pause of much shorter duration was sufficient for accurate selection of the intended meaning. A difference in pause duration of 175 msec. was found between the two locations studied.