Wait time

Also called Pause time, Expectant pause, Processing time, Thinking time

Count to ten in your head after you speak. It costs nothing, it needs no training, and it changes more conversations than any device does.

What it is

Wait time is the pause a partner leaves after saying something, before saying anything else. For most speaking adults it's about a second. For a person who is finding a symbol, planning a movement, working through a scanning cycle or processing what they've just heard, a second is nothing. The message has barely arrived.

The strategy is exactly what it sounds like: wait longer. Much longer. Ten seconds is the number usually taught, and ten seconds of silence feels, to a talker, like a small eternity.

Who it can help

Almost everyone who uses AAC or has slowed processing: people who use switch scanning, people with aphasia or dementia, autistic people, people with a learning disability, and people who stammer. Anyone whose reply takes longer to build than a partner is used to waiting.

It's the partner's habit that changes, not the person's. That's why it's free, and why it's so often not done: it asks the talkers to be quiet.

How it works

When a partner fills a pause, they usually do one of three things: repeat the question, answer it themselves, or ask a different one. Each resets the person's clock. Someone who was four seconds into finding a symbol now has a new sentence to process, and the first reply is abandoned. From the outside it looks as if they never answer. From the inside they never get to.

Waiting does two things. It gives the person's motor and language planning time to finish. And it signals, without words, that you expect an answer and think it's worth waiting for, which is presuming competence in action.

Ten seconds is a floor, not a ceiling. For a person scanning through rows on a device, one selection may take twenty or thirty seconds, and a sentence far longer. Watch for signs that a message is in progress, such as eyes on the board or a hand moving, and keep waiting while they are there.

Getting started

Ask one thing, then count silently to ten with your mouth shut and your face relaxed. Don't repeat, rephrase or help. If nothing comes, you can offer a model or a choice, but not before ten.

Tell the other people in the room what you're doing, because the hardest part is that someone else jumps in at second three. A family rule of "one question, then everyone waits" works.

If the person uses the Talk board, set the voice speed to what they like and don't touch the screen for them while they're looking at it. Looking is part of choosing.

Where to get help

Your speech and language therapist can time you (people are routinely shocked) and set a target. STAMMA has good material on waiting for a person who stammers to finish rather than finishing for them. Communication Matters and the ACE Centre include wait time in all their partner training.