Listening to the sound of silence: disfluent silent pauses in speech have consequences for listeners

▶ Silent pauses in speech affected ERPs to a target word immediately following the pause. ▶ Linguistic (PMN, N400) and working memory (LPC) processes are implicated. ▶ Words following silence were more likely to be later recognised as having been heard. ▶ Silence patterns with fillers, implicating temporal delay in the speech signal.