Hi, There is no simple answer to your question. The perception of communication break-down is context dependent. Our research suggests that a good rule-of-thumb is that a correspondent whose pause is longer than ten times the average response time would be perceived as silent. See our 2006 paper on this topic: Kalman, Y. M., Ravid, G., Raban, D. R., & Rafaeli, S. (2006). Pauses and response latencies: A chronemic analysis of asynchronous CMC. Journal of Computer Mediated Communication, 12, 1-23. doi: 10.1111/j.1083-6101.2006.00312.x as well as: Kalman, Y. M., & Rafaeli, S. (2011). Online pauses and silence: Chronemic expectancy violations in written computer-mediated communication. Communication Research, 38(1), 54-69. doi: 10.1177/0093650210378229 For more information on synchronous CMC see: Avrahami, D., & Hudson, S. E. (2006, April 22-27). Responsiveness in instant messaging: predictive models supporting inter-personal communication. Paper presented at the CHI conference, Montréal, Canada. ([1]http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~nx6/pubs/Avrahami_CHI_06.pdf) If you need more information, feel free to contact me off-list. Yoram Yoram Kalman, PhD [2]www.kalmans.com Cell: +972 54 574 7375 On 11/12/2012 11:18, Wang Airong wrote: Dear all, Apologize for cross-posting! I am looking for literature that talks about pauses in students' conversations e specially in the virtual world classes. Does anybody know such kind of literatur e, and how long is a pause that is considered to be a break-down, 4 seconds, or something else? Thank you so much! Best, Airong WANG Doctoral Student in English Didactics Mid Sweden University Sweden _______________________________________________ The [3]Air-L@listserv.aoir.org mailing list is provided by the Association of Internet Researchers [4]http://aoir.org Subscribe, change options or unsubscribe at: [5]http://listserv.aoir.org/listinf o.cgi/air-l-aoir.org Join the Association of Internet Researchers: [6]http://www.aoir.org/ References 1. http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~nx6/pubs/Avrahami_CHI_06.pdf 2. http://www.kalmans.com/ 3. mailto:Air-L@listserv.aoir.org 4. http://aoir.org/ 5. http://listserv.aoir.org/listinfo.cgi/air-l-aoir.org 6. http://www.aoir.org/