Abstract
Despite their frequency in conversational talk, little is known about howums anduhs affect listeners' on-line processing of spontaneous speech. Two studies ofums anduhs in English and Dutch reveal that hearing anuh has a beneficial effect on listeners' ability to recognize words in upcoming speech, but that hearing anum has neither a beneficial nor a detrimental effect. The results suggest thatum anduh are different from one another and support the hypothesis thatuh is a signal of short upcoming delay andum is a signal of a long upcoming delay.
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Some of the results were presented at the 38th Annual Meeting of the Psychonomic Society, Philadelphia, in 1997. The research was supported by an NSF-NATO Postdoctoral Fellowship and by faculty research funds granted by the University of California, Santa Cruz. Transcripts of the materials can be obtained from the author.
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Fox Tree, J.E. Listeners' uses ofum anduh in speech comprehension. Memory & Cognition 29, 320–326 (2001). https://doi.org/10.3758/BF03194926
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.3758/BF03194926