Filled pauses have been shown to play a significant role in comprehension and long-term storage of speech. Behavioral and neurophysiological studies suggest that filled pauses can help mitigate semantic and/or syntactic incongruity in spoken language. The purpose of the present study was to explore how filled pauses affect the processing of spontaneous speech in the listener. Brain activation of eight subjects was measured by electroencephalography (EEG), while they listened to recordings of Wizard-of-Oz travel booking dialogues.
The results show a P300 component in the Primary Motor Cortex, but not in the Broca or Wernicke areas. A possible interpretation could be that the listener is preparing to engage in speech. However, a larger sample is currently being collected.