Abstract
An experiment with a memory recall test based on continuous spoken texts was carried out examining the absence of pauses. A sample of 24 subjects listened to eight narratives with the task to subsequently fill in the missing words.
The study tests the hypothesis that spoken texts with the pauses removed will lead to a worse recall of the words contained in them. The results indicate that pauses have an impact on the effectiveness of language communication, as the lexical content of spoken texts without pauses was more difficult to retrieve relative to texts with the pauses intact.
This seems to suggest that apart from speech production requirements, pauses meet beneficially some of the perceptual constraints. Benchmark data for further experimenting are provided.