Abstract
PurposeGap duration contributes to the perception of utterances as fluent or disfluent, but few studies have systematically investigated the impact of gap duration on fluency judgments. The purposes of this study were to determine how gaps impact disfluency perception, and how listener background and experience impact these judgments. MethodsSixty participants (20 adults who stutter [AWS], 20 speech-language pathologists [SLPs], and 20 naïve listeners) listened to four tokens of the utterance, “Buy Bobby a puppy,” produced at typical speech rates. The gap duration between “Buy” and “Bobby” was systematically manipulated with gaps ranging from 23.59 ms to 325.44 ms. Participants identified stimuli as fluent or disfluent. ResultsThe disfluency threshold – the point at which 50 % of trials were categorized as disfluent – occurred at a gap duration of 126.46 ms, across all participants and tokens. The SLPs exhibited higher disfluency thresholds than the AWS and the naïve listeners. ConclusionThis study determined, based on the specific set of stimuli used, when the perception of utterances tends to shift from fluent to disfluent. Group differences indicated that SLPs are less inclined to identify disfluencies in speech potentially because they aim to be less critical of speech that deviates from “typical”.
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Disclaimer: All third-party content on this website/platform is and will remain the property of their respective owners and is provided on "as is" basis without any warranties, express or implied. Use of third-party content does not indicate any affiliation, sponsorship with or endorsement by them. Any references to third-party content is to identify the corresponding services and shall be considered fair use under The CopyrightLaw.