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Description: Speech pauses in conversations have important communicative functions and can allow interlocutors to make inferences about the nature of the conversation. For example, interlocutors can infer communication style, emotional state of the speaker, or speaker identity by evaluating the pause characteristics of a conversation (e.g. Fletcher 2010; Igras-Cybulska et al. 2016; Duez 1982; Çokal et al. 2019; O’Connell & Kowal 1983). Also, pauses allow interlocutors to make inferences about their communication partners’ knowledge and intentions. For example, long pauses in response to content questions can indicate hesitation, low confidence or uncertainty about the answer (Levinson 1983; Brennan & WIlliams 1995), or long pauses after requests can signal unwillingness to comply with the requests (Wootton 1981; Roberts & Francis 2013). Pauses can also differ in native and non-native speech (e.g. De Jong 2016; Trouvain et al. 2016; Matzinger et al. 2020; Raupach 1980; Tavakoli 2011). While non-native speech as such has been shown to be evaluated differently by native speakers along a number of dimensions, including trustworthiness, credibility (Lev-Ari & Keysar 2010; Boduch-Grabka & Lev-Ari 2021), prestige (Coupland & Bishop 2007) and competence (Fuertes et al. 2012; Gluszek & Dovidio 2010), among others, it is still unclear how pauses in non-native speech contribute to these evaluations. We aim to fill this gap by conducting an exploratory perception experiment in which we investigate how listeners evaluate the pause length of native and non-native speakers in terms of knowledge, confidence and willingness to grant requests. In particular, we hypothesize that a) listeners will evaluate native and non-native speakers differently with regard to these dimensions, and, more importantly, that b) this difference is mediated by the length of the pauses that the speakers make before they answer a question or grant a request. To test this hypothesis, we will ask native Polish participants to rate short staged conversations, during which a speaker asks questions or makes requests that are answered or granted by either native or non-native speakers of Polish. The pauses that the respondents make to answer the questions or grant the requests will be experimentally manipulated to be either short (200 ms) or long (1200 ms; cf. Roberts & Francis 2013, Dingemanse & Liesenfeld 2022; to be piloted). Participants will be asked to rate the answers on a) how knowledgeable, b) how confident (for questions) and c) how willing to grant the request (for requests) they perceive the respondents to be. We predict that short and long pauses will be perceived differently in native and non-native speakers: we predict that longer pauses made by native speakers before answers will be associated with the perception of lower knowledge and confidence and shorter pauses with higher knowledge and confidence. This is because longer pauses may reflect the cognitive processing time for thinking about the answer and hesitation with regard to the content of the answer (Nakane 2007; Chafe 1985). In the case of requests, we predict that longer pauses - similarly - made by native speakers will be associated with lower willingness to grant the request than shorter pauses. This is because longer pauses before addressing a request tend to introduce its declination rather than granting (Wootton 1981). For non-native speakers, in contrast, we predict that longer pause lengths will not be attributed to lower knowledge, confidence or willingness, as participants will instead attribute longer pause lengths to the cognitive processing time needed to process the question or the request and think about their reply in a non-native language (Cenoz 2000). Understanding which cognitive states are attributed to native and non-native speakers when they make pauses of different lengths may have important implications for intercultural communication settings where topics are negotiated between native and non-native speakers. Our hypotheses in a nutshell: H1: Native speakers will be judged as being more knowledgeable and confindent. From the literature we cannot derive any clear hypotheses about the perception of willingness. H2: For native speakers, the longer the pause, the less knowledgeable, confident and willing they will be perceived. H3: There will be an interaction of nativeness and pause length, so H2 will be different for non-native speakers. Either, there will be no differences in long and short pauses, or non-native speakers with long pauses will be perceived as more knowledgeable, confident and willing (because they are perceived as taking the time to process the questions/requests properly in a non-native language).