Abstract
This study was undertaken to test the hypothesis that the occurrence of filled pauses in speech should depend on the presence of the other as hearers, and that filled pauses should play not only such an intrapersonal role but also a cognitive one of pauses in general. Each of 11 adults was assigned to all three conditions varied from intrapersonal (for self) to interpersonal (for the other) communication level, and asked to describe some series of pictures from WISC picture arrangement problems. The most important finding was that incidences of filled plus silent pauses were almost equal among conditions and, at such constant level of timing in speech, both kinds of pause were distributed complementarily at each communication level.
