Variations in normal speech disfluencies.

Abstract

College adults were asked to speak in each of three situations. All 40 subjects started in an Alone situation in which they simply talked spontaneously about any topic while sitting alone in a room. They then participated in a situation in which they were asked to speak alone in front of a TV camera and lights, or as if to an audience (Audience-TV situation). Finally, the experimenter entered the room and engaged the subject in casual Conversation for the final situation. Each situation was 12 minutes and was tape recorded. After the last session, the subjects filled out a brief questionnaire in which they rated each situation according to their judgment of the need to speak carefully and of their estimated disfluency in the situation. The most significant finding is that subjects were most disfluent in those situations they rated as least important. Contrary to usual observations, the greatest frequency of disfluencies occurred in the Conversation rather than the Audience-TV situation. It appeared that as subjects became more concerned about their speech, they monitored it more carefully and thus became more fluent.