Browsing by Author "Owens, Sarah J."

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    Disfluencies signal reference to novel objects for adults but not children
    (Cambridge University Press : Journal of Child Language, 2018-01) Owens, Sarah J.; Thacker, Justine Marie; Graham, Susan
    Speech disfluencies can guide the ways in which listeners interpret spoken language. Here, we examined whether three-year-olds, five-year-olds, and adults use filled pauses to anticipate that a speaker is likely to refer to a novel object. Across three experiments, participants were presented with pairs of novel and familiar objects and heard a speaker refer to one of the objects using a fluent ("Look at the ball/lep!") or disfluent ("Look at thee uh ball/lep!") expression. The salience of the speaker's unfamiliarity with the novel referents, and the way in which the speaker referred to the novel referents (i.e., a noun vs. a description) varied across experiments. Three- and five-year-olds successfully identified familiar and novel targets, but only adults' looking patterns reflected increased looks to novel objects in the presence of a disfluency. Together, these findings demonstrate that adults, but not young children, use filled pauses to anticipate reference to novel objects.
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    Thee, uhh disfluency effect in preschoolers: A cue to discourse status
    (British Psychological Society : British Journal of Developmental Psychology, 2016-01) Owens, Sarah J.; Graham, Susan
    Speech disfluencies, such as filled pauses (ummm, uhhh), are increasingly recognized as an informative element of the speech stream. Here, we examined whether 2- and 3-year-olds expected that the presence of filled pause would signal reference to objects that are new to a discourse. Children viewed pairs of familiar objects on a screen and heard a speaker refer to one of the objects twice in succession. Next, children heard a critical utterance and were asked to look and point at either the discourse-given (i.e., previously mentioned) or discourse-new (i.e., previously unmentioned) object using a fluent ('Look at the ball!') or disfluent ('Look at thee uh ball!') expression. The results indicated that 3-year-old children, but not 2-year-old children, initially expected the speaker to continue to refer to given information in the critical utterance. Upon hearing a filled pause, however, both 2- and 3-year-old children's looking patterns reflected increased looks to discourse-new objects, although the timing of the effect differed between the age groups. Together, these findings demonstrate that young children have an emerging understanding of the role of filled pauses in speech.