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They are most often called "filled pauses," according to communication researcher Nicholas Christenfeld, in a CNN report filed by Jamie Macintyre. On the other hand, a pause without any vocalization would be a silent pause.

Using sounds such as "um" or "uh" is a way of pausing to think without giving up our "air time". It lets people know we're not finished speaking, just trying to find the best words for our thoughts. These sounds are often referred to as disfluencies, although they may or may not detract from our intended communication.

These sounds are described by communication scholars as paralanguage -- they are simply vocalizations, rather than words. More precisely they are non-verbal vocalizations. Other examples of vocal paralanguage include tone of voice, speed, pitch, and volume of our speech. Paralinguistic elements of a person's communication are more powerful than the actual words spoken. People judge a speaker's credibility and degree of similarity to themselves by their paralanguage, not by their language.

In terms of "ums", Christenfeld conducted a study as a graduate student at Columbia Univeristy in which he found that the more technical the subject matter, the fewer ums will be used by a speaker. He theorized that speakers in the creative fields use more ums because they are actually contemplating their subject matter while speaking, while those in the technical fields are sticking to the straight and narrow of existing knowlege and facts.

The Columbia study focused specifically on "ums" found that, generally, isteners didn't really notice the number of "um"s uttered by a speaker. Other types of disfluencies, have been studied and found to have negative influences.

One in particular, used more frequently by younger women, is the tendency to use a rising intonation when making a statement. The rise in pitch at the end of a sentence conveys a question, rather than a declarative statement. It can indicate uncertainty and a lack of confidence (Adler, Proctor, and Towne, 2005..

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