Study of the temporal variables in the spontaneous speech of five aphasic patients in two situations, interview and description

Abstract

Verbal rate can be considered to be dependent on three simple variables: the phonation rate, the number of silent pauses, and the mean duration of silent pauses. Spontaneous speech samples of five aphasic patients were recorded in two situations, interview and description of a picture. The specific contribution of the three variables in the variations of verbal rate has been calculated. The recordings of the aphasic patients have been analyzed with reference to normals in the two experimental situations. In each case the results are discussed in relation to the aphasic disorder, in particular to the nature of encoding impairments.