Pausing and breathing while reading aloud: development from 2nd to 7th grade in French speaking children

Pauses when reading aloud play an essential role in and listening comprehension (for a review: Godde et al., 2020). Among the various types of pauses, breathing pauses during oral are particularly important. Their placement, frequency duration tell us about breath voice coordination as well articulatory planning. These skills that develop over time, from early stages acquisition to skilled levels, under-researched. The present study aims describe how children ability use by comparing young French speaking readers ranging second seventh graders adults. Voice patterns 295 20 adults were recorded reading. Specific attention was given frequency, placement inhalation phonation delay. Our results revealed youngest students performed more ungrammatical breathed frequently produced longer delays. Children older than grade 4 visibly proficient at planning their tended rely on punctuation. Finally, pause observed for 7 almost adult level. This developmental suggests children’s pausing occurs gradually between 2nd 7th grades highlights important punctuation syntactic-prosodic breaks. Based our results, we discuss relation decoding expressivity, didactic proposals developing prosody.