PURPOSE: We investigated sex differences in the production of pauses in autistic (pre-)adolescents in two conversational contexts: a monologue and an interactive discussion. METHOD: = 12.35 years), 49 autistic (22 females, 27 males) and 58 nonautistic (30 females, 28 males). Speech was elicited from two tasks: a get-to-know conversation and a narrative task. We analyzed the production of filled "uh" and "um" pauses as well as the production of unusually long silent pauses (> 700 ms). RESULTS: Autistic participants produced more silent pauses than nonautistic participants, but no significant group differences were found for filled pauses. Filled pauses occurred more frequently in the get-to-know than in the narratives, which underscores their pragmatic functions. No significant effect of sex was found. CONCLUSIONS: Autism diagnosis and conversational context, but not sex, influenced pause productions. Our results also highlight the importance of cross-linguistic studies, including in autism research, to avoid the overgeneralization of findings from English-speaking populations. SUPPLEMENTAL MATERIAL: https://doi.org/10.23641/asha.32078268.
Belenger et al. (Tue,) studied this question.
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