Careful readers will notice a
few «
trigger words» here («educational goals,» «rigor,» «career success») that suggest a strong corporate reform agenda may be lurking beneath the surface of this telethon.
Study subjects asked to «talk» their way through mazes used more verbal fillers when confronted with mazes that could be navigated using multiple routes.33 Conversely, mazes with a single path (and
fewer choices) produced
fewer fillers.34 But the maze study produced another interesting result: When study subjects were told they could use only four
words to talk their way through the maze (left, right, up, down), they began to use more verbal fillers, even when describing simple mazes.35 Researchers posited that the «lexical suppression» created by limiting speakers to four
words triggered a stopping and starting of the speech apparatus that prevented speakers from developing a normal speech rhythm.36 Thus, while verbal fillers are a mark of task complexity, they also appear where, «for some other reason, the flow of speech is disrupted.»