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Functions of Hesitations in the Speech of Normal Families and Families of Schizophrenic Patients

Sentences containing several types of hesitation, including pauses, repetitions and word fragments, were sampled from the interaction of families of schizophrenic and normal children. These were submitted to subjects who attempted to guess each successive word in the sentence. The degree to which words were correctly guessed was associated with the position of the word relative to the hesitation in the sentence. Differences were found in the predictability of words antecedent and subsequent to non-content and content hesitations. Furthermore, the patterns of predictability were different for words from the two types of families; words following non-content hesitations in schizophrenic families dropped to low levels of predictability, 18 per cent, in contrast to a 36 per cent level of predictability for the same type of word in normal families. The findings are discussed in terms of the possible different functions of hesitations in schizophrenic and normal families, and related to clinical reports of difficulty in comprehending conversations among schizophrenic family members.