Does the duration of silent pauses differ between words of open and closed class? A duração da pausa silente difere entre palavras de classe aberta ou fechada?

Purpose: The study aim was to determine whether the mean duration of silent pauses depends on the word class (open or closed) and to compare the duration for each type of word between children with typical language development and children with specific language impairment (SLI). Methods: The study included 40 children with typical language development and 20 children with SLI, aged between 7 and 10 years. Each subject produced 15 story narratives based on a separate sequence of four pictures for each narrative. After the transcription of the samples, the words were classified as open class (noun, adjective, verb, adverb, and numeral) or closed class (article, preposition, pronoun, conjunction, and interjection). In the second phase of the study, the samples were analyzed using software specific to the analysis of silent pauses and the duration (milliseconds) of the pauses that occurred immediately before each of these grammatical categories was recorded. Results: In both groups, silent pauses were longer when preceding closed class words and individuals in the SLI group produced longer silent pauses than their peers did. Conclusion: The duration of a silent pause varied according to the grammatical class of the preceded word and it was shorter when followed by an open class word. In addition, the fact that individuals with SLI produce longer silent pauses than their peers confirms that their language processing is slower.