Analysis

The average filler rate, average repeat rate, and average restart rate all increase when a student is talking to a teacher compared to a peer The average filler rate increases from 7.05 fillers per 100 words to 8.84 fillers per 100 words The average repeat rate increases from 1.05 repeats per 100 words to 1.45 repeats per 100 words The average restart rate increased from 0.86 restarts per 100 words to 1.48 restarts per 100 words With the total, combined data, it was discovered that an adolescent uses some sort of speech disfluency approximately once every ten words. The students whose rates decreased when talking to a teacher mostly had very small decreases

Conclusion
7 of 12 participants increased their rate of filler usage 8 of 12 participants increased their rate of repeat usage 9 of 12 participants increased their rate of restart usage 8 of 12 participants increased their rate of total disfleuncy People are more likely to use disfluencies when talking to an authoritative figure compared to when talking to a peer Men were more likely to increase their use of disfluencies in the peer to teacher conversation than women Back in 2001, when Bortfield conducted her study, she did implement a different procedure to initiate conversation, which could lead to some differences in our data, but it should be noted that her total average filler rate for all ages was 2.56 fillers per 100 words, compared to our total average filler rate of adolescents as 7.90 fillers per 100 words

Um, like, well, you know, okay? Future Investigation

Increase sample size Conduct a variation of the experiment by substituting the role of the adolescent with an adult. Then conduct the experiment in the same way, using a colleague or friend, to engage in one conversation, and a more authoritative figure, such as their employer or supervisor.

Bibliography
Bortfeld, H., Leon, S.D., Bloom, J.E., Schoeber, M.F., Brennan, S.E. (2001) Disfluency Rates in Conversation: Effects of Age, Relationship, Topic, Role, and Gender. Language And Speech, 44(2), 123-137. Corley, M. and Stewart, O.W. (2008). Hesitation disfluencies in spontaneous speech: The meaning of um. Language and Linguistic Compass. (2)4, 589-602. Clark, H.H. and Fox Tree, J.E. (2002) Using uh and um in spontaneous speaking. Cognition 84, 73-111.