Pausing patterns in English school-age children with a history of late talking: Frequent pauses and prolonged response delays

Introduction

This study explored silent pause patterns, their interaction with filled pauses, and response delays in five-year-old children who were previously identified as late talkers in their conversations with adults.

Methods

We analyzed 73 child-adult conversations (36 with a late-talking history, 37 typically developing) from the CHILDES Clinical English Ellis Weismer Corpus at age five across three temporal stages. Using Praat, we identified and classified silent pauses (> 250 ms) by duration and position and annotated them across three tiers: silent pause categories, pauses near filled pauses, and response delays. We employed mixed-effects models to examine group and gender differences in pause duration, frequency, and position, alongside their relationship with filled pauses, and response delays across conversational stages.

Results

Duration-based analyses revealed children with a history of late talking produced longer and more frequent silent pauses than typically developing children, particularly at 500–1000 ms, with males showing fewer short pauses. Position-based analyses showed children with a history of late talking exhibited more utterance-onset and within-phrase pauses, whilst males demonstrated shorter utterance onset pauses. Whilst typically developing children demonstrated decreased pausing across conversational stages, children with a late-talking history maintained consistent patterns. Both groups preferred ‘um’ over ‘uh’, though children with a late-talking history showed greater reliance on ‘um’-silent pause combinations. Response delay analyses indicated these children had longer delays.

Conclusions

School-age children with a history of late talking demonstrate persistent differences in pausing patterns, highlighting the need for extended support. These findings inform the development of targeted interventions considering conversational timing in clinical practice.