Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: FRIDAY, April 19, 1991 TAG: 9104190184
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A5 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: NEW YORK LENGTH: Medium
They've been counting uhhhs and ummmms to find why some people pause more often than others. Their answer: It depends on what the speaker is talking about.
Chemistry and mathematics have a lower uhhhh rating than art or literature, the researchers found. The reason: The very nature of the subject makes word choices more difficult.
The ummmm quest started after psychology professor Stanley Schachter heard a lecturer "who so hummed and hawed that it drove me out of my mind. I just got curious about the phenomenon."
The phenomenon is called "filled pauses." Previous researchers had eliminated nervousness as a prime cause.
Analyzing the words of professors in 41 classroom lectures in 10 academic areas, Schachter and graduate student Nicholas Christenfeld found plenty of uhs in the speech of some but few in others.
The lowest rate was found during biology lessons with less than one uh a minute escaping the instructors' lips. The most occurred in English literature classes as speakers racked up 6.54 uhs per minute (UPM).
Natural-science lecturers registered 1.39 UPM; social-science lecturers, 3.84; humanities lecturers, 4.82, according to findings published in the March Journal of Personality and Social Psychology.
Could the explanation be that different sorts of people were attracted to thevarious disciplines? To find out, the same lecturers were asked in interviews about graduate-training requirements.
The researchers found "the members of different departments were virtually identical in the tendency to say uh during the interview." So it was the subject matter, not the speaker.
Why does subject matter make the difference?
"Think of a statement like E equals MC squared. It can't be MC to the third power or to the fourth power. There are absolutely no alternatives," Schachter said. "Compare that to if you were to conclude a sentence with the reason [artist] Jackson Pollock put that red dot up in the upper right hand corner of the canvas. The alternatives are practically limitless."
Research has found "that you say um or take a silent pause whenever machinery is processing your verbal output or when it's searching for the next idea, sentence, word or phrase," said Schachter.
They tried their uh measure elsewhere. George Bush was producing 1.7 uhs a minute when he debated Michael Dukakis during the 1988 campaign. Dukakis came in at 2.7 uhs per minute.
"It's a tough call whether you want an um-free president," Christenfeld said. "You want them confident but to have the wisdom to consider alternatives."
He said a low number of uhs in such a setting could reflect that one candidate memorized or rehearsed more answers than the other.
One of the highest rates seen belonged to talk show host David Letterman, who says uh eight to 10 times a minute. Perhaps those are pauses for effect.
Schachter says women utter fewer uhs than men.
Don't worry. Christenfeld said people "basically simply don't notice ums," except when talking to someone researching the subject.
by CNB