Effects Of Speech Rate Research Articles

Listening effort under different rates of speech

Listening effort, the cognitive resources allocated to understand spoken language, is a critical issue in communication under adverse listening environments. The present study investigated how listening effort would be affected by differing speech tempos. The experiment involved 23 native Korean adults with normal hearing, who were presented with linguistically complex Korean sentences at five different speeds (35%∼200% of original time). The cognitive load associated with listening under various speech rate conditions was quantified employing a dual-task paradigm, where the increased listening effort would impair the performance on an additional cognitive task. Participants listened to the sentences while performing an n-back task and then repeated back the sentence they heard. The results found a significant effect of speech rate on the n-back task, with lower accuracies in the faster speech conditions. The additional task also increased the overall cognitive load of sentence recognition, leading to various speech errors, such as the omission of key content words, unnecessary additions, and substitutions with similar words. This demonstrates that increased cognitive load during listening impairs speech processing at multiple levels (e.g., semantic processing, retention of words in working memory), emphasizing the need to adjust speech tempos for better understanding and comfort in listeners.

The Effect of Habitual Speech Rate on Speaker-Specific Processing in English Stop Voicing Perception.

This study investigates listeners' ability to track individual speakers' habitual speech rate in a dialogue and adjust their perception of durational contrasts. Previous studies that found such adjustments are inconclusive as adjustments can be attributed to exemplars of target structures in the dialogue rather than perceptual calibration of habitual speech rates. In this study, English listeners were presented with a dialogue between a fast and slow speaker, containing no stressed syllable-initial voiceless stops. Listeners then categorized /pi/-/bi/ syllables differing along a voice onset time continuum. Results did not show conclusive evidence that listeners' response differed systematically depending on speakers' habitual speech rate.

Effect of speech rate and complexity on sentence comprehension in Alzheimer’s disease

ABSTRACT Previous research has not shown a benefit of slowed speech on the comprehension of sentences by persons with Alzheimer’s disease (AD). The objective of this study was to replicate and extend the findings from previous research by employing a novel speech rate manipulation that inserted strategic pauses at phrase and clause boundaries in sentences. Fourteen participants with AD were instructed to match auditorily presented sentences to one of several pictures that corresponded to the correct meaning of each sentence. The sentences varied in their speech rate and grammatical complexity. The results show that participants’ comprehension did not significantly benefit from the altered speech rate, though participants did demonstrate better comprehension of simpler than more complex sentences. The findings extend previous research by showing that even when employing a more natural method of slowing the speech signal it did not benefit AD participants’ comprehension. The results also contribute to evidence-based clinical recommendations concerning speech modifications to facilitate verbal comprehension in Alzheimer’s disease.

Speech Rate and Young EFL Learners’ Listening Comprehension

Speech rate is one of the salient characteristics that speakers modify their speech for second or foreign language learners to gain more comprehensive input (Krashen, 1987). For young EFL learners, a slower speech rate can be a critical factor that helps them properly process linguistic input and increase self-confidence in listening comprehension. The present study investigated the effect of speech rate on listening comprehension performance among young EFL learners in Taiwan. Sixty-six junior high school students from two homogeneous classes participated in two elementary-level listening comprehension tests. All participants took the first test at the delivery rate of 116 words per minute (wpm) set by Taiwan’s General English Proficiency Test. In the second test, the two classes of participants were examined at two slower delivery rates—98 wpm and 58 wpm, respectively. Results reveal a facilitating effect of the slightly slower speech rate of 98 wpm on the participants’ listening comprehension; however, slower speech does not make a significant difference at the much slower rate of 58 wpm. The results of the study are then discussed, and implications are drawn.

Speech Rate and Turn-Transition Pause Duration in Dutch and English Spontaneous Question-Answer Sequences

The duration of inter-speaker pauses is a pragmatically salient aspect of conversation that is affected by linguistic and non-linguistic context. Theories of conversational turn-taking imply that, due to listener entrainment to the flow of syllables, a higher speech rate will be associated with shorter turn-transition times (TTT). Previous studies have found conflicting evidence, however, some of which may be due to methodological differences. In order to test the relationship between speech rate and TTT, and how this may be modulated by other dialogue factors, we used question-answer sequences from spontaneous conversational corpora in Dutch and English. As utterance-final lengthening is a local cue to turn endings, we also examined the impact of utterance-final syllable rhyme duration on TTT. Using mixed-effect linear regression models, we observed evidence for a positive relationship between speech rate and TTT: thus, a higher speech rate is associated with longer TTT, contrary to most theoretical predictions. Moreover, for answers following a pause (“gaps”) there was a marginal interaction between speech rate and final rhyme duration, such that relatively long final rhymes are associated with shorter TTT when foregoing speech rate is high. We also found evidence that polar (yes/no) questions are responded to with shorter TTT than open questions, and that direct answers have shorter TTT than responses that do not directly answer the questions. Moreover, the effect of speech rate on TTT was modulated by question type. We found no predictors of the (negative) TTT for answers that overlap with the foregoing questions. Overall, these observations suggest that TTT is governed by multiple dialogue factors, potentially including the salience of utterance-final timing cues. Contrary to some theoretical accounts, there is no strong evidence that higher speech rates are consistently associated with shorter TTT.

The effect of phrasing, speech rate, and information structure on tonal coarticulation in spontaneous Cantonese

Pre-low raising is a tone coarticulation phenomenon in which the pitch of a high-tone syllable is higher before a low tone than before a high tone. Lee and Xu (2016) found that speech rate influences the degree of this pre-low raising, in recordings of read disyllables in carrier phrases. In the present study, we examine this phenomenon in spontaneous Hong Kong Cantonese using the CantoMap Map Task dataset (Winterstein et al., 2020), also exploring the possibility of similar effects on the realization of other tones. Along with speech rate, we also consider the possible effects on thistonal dissimilation of phrasing (relations between a syllable and the subsequent syllable), the relative location of a syllable in a sentence, and information structure (the role of the word in the map task interaction). We expect that all of these factors will influence tonal coarticulation in general, and pre-low raising in particular.

How Do Voice Characteristics Affect Tourism Interpretation Purchases? An Empirical Study Based on Voice Mining

This study investigates how voice characteristics (i.e., speech rate, loudness, pitch) affect interpretation purchases in digital interpretation platforms through the lenses of signaling theory and nonverbal communication. Based on auditory and transactional data from a leading digital interpretation platform in China, this study uses voice mining techniques to extract voice characteristics and examine their effects on interpretation purchases. Findings demonstrate the significant positive effects of speech rate and the significant inverted U-effects of loudness and pitch on interpretation purchases. This study thus extends tourism interpretation research focused on traditional forms to digital interpretation platforms and provides empirical evidence that nonverbal signals (voice characteristics) matter in tourism interpretation purchases. Findings also offer practical implications for tourism interpretation innovation and platform operation.

Fast-Speech-Induced Hypoarticulation Does Not Considerably Affect the Diachronic Reversal of Complementary Length in Central Bavarian.

This study investigated a sound change in progress by which the Central Bavarian dialect feature of complementary length between consonant and the preceding vowel is giving way to the unrestricted combination possibility of long (Vː) and short (V) vowels with following longer fortis (Cː) and shorter lenis (C) stops, respectively. This 2 × 2 system is also found in the standard variety of German. While previous studies have regarded any such findings of convergence toward Standard German as being a result of language contact, the present study specifically tested the possibility of fast-speech-induced hypoarticulation being a system-internal driver of this change. The focus of this study was on acoustic cues to the postvocalic stop. Following the apparent-time paradigm, acoustic analyses of 10 younger and 10 older dialect speakers revealed that (1) younger dialect speakers produced both VC and VːCː (both formerly illegal in the dialect), but (2) older dialect speakers produced only VːCː sequences with duration patterns similar to those of the control group of 10 Standard German speakers. Analyses of various dependent variables further showed (3) the (apparently) delayed emergence of aspiration as an additional cue to the fortis-lenis contrast in Western Central Bavarian particularly in younger dialect speakers, (4) no considerable effect of speech rate on the dispersion of and overlap between any of the four vowel-plus-stop combinations, and (5) the irregular spread of this change that appears to be gradual. As such, the findings support a model of linguistic change that also accounts for gradual changes in dialect borrowing.

Audiovisual Mandarin Lexical Tone Perception in Quiet and Noisy Contexts: The Influence of Visual Cues and Speech Rate.

Armed with the theory of embodied cognition proposing tight interactions between perception, motor, and cognition, this study aimed to test the hypothesis that speech rate-altered Mandarin lexical tone perception in quiet and noisy environments could be affected by the bodily dynamic cross-modal information. Fifty-three adult listeners completed a Mandarin tone perception task with 720 tone stimuli in auditory-only (AO), auditory-facial (AF), and auditory-facial-plus-gestural (AFG) modalities, at fast, normal, and slow speech rates under quiet and noisy conditions. In AF and AFG modalities, both congruent and incongruent audiovisual information were designed and presented. Generalized linear mixed-effects models were constructed to analyze the accuracy of tone perception across different conditions. In Mandarin tone perception, the magnitude of enhancement of AF and AFG cues across three speech rates was significantly higher than that of the AO cue in the adverse context of noise, yet additional metaphoric gestures did not show significant differences from the facial information. Furthermore, the performance of auditory tone perception at the fast speech rate was significantly better than that at the normal speech rate when the inputs were incongruent between auditory and visual channels in quiet. This study provided compelling evidence showing that integrated audiovisual information plays a vital role not only in improving lexical tone perception in noise but also in modulating the effects of speech rate on Mandarin tone perception in quiet for native listeners. Our findings, supporting the theory of embodied cognition, are implicational for speech and hearing rehabilitation among both young and old clinical populations.

Modulating your speech rate: The effect of speech rate on crowdfunding performance

Marketers, managers, and researchers often believe that the speech rate in the information transmission is impactful on the service satisfaction and consumer purchasing decisions. However, there is little systematic investigation of investor risk decisions in entrepreneurial finance. In this research, the authors propose that the speech rate of entrepreneurs influences real-world funding outcomes and that speech rate interacts with visual color in the short pitch video of crowdfunding projects. Using audio-visual mining technology, our empirical analysis shows that in a non-laboratory setting, entrepreneurs’ speech rate negatively influences money performance, but positively influences information performance. However, these effects are enhanced for visual color with high lightness and chroma, but weakened for visual color with high hue. This paper provides a novel lens for understanding the persuasive effect of auditory and visual cues in financial decision-making. In addition, our results suggest that entrepreneurs can adjust their speech rate and the visual color in their pitch videos to improve crowdfunding performance.

Palatalization of /d/ across word boundaries in UK English

In many spoken varieties of English, the coronal stop /d/ may palatalize or affricate before /j/, including at word boundaries; e.g., “did you” [ˈdɪdʒu], “would you” [ˈwʊdʒu]. We study this process in the large, naturalistic Audio BNC (http://www.phon.ox.ac.uk/AudioBNC). Previous studies have found that coronal fricatives /s, z/ palatalize preceding /j/ in predictable contexts and at increased speech rates, implying that palatalization results from coarticulatory gestural overlap. However, analysis of /t/ shows that palatalization to [tʃ] is a categorical stylistic variant, which is instead selected in formal contexts at slower speech rates. To determine whether [dʒ] results from gestural overlap or as a stylistic variant, we analyze /d/’s rate of palatalization using approximately 8000 tokens of /d#j/ gathered from the force-aligned Audio BNC. Tokens were impressionistically coded as palatalized to [dʒ], released as [d], or unreleased/deleted. With multinomial logistic regressioni, we test whether effects of lexical frequency, speech rate and duration, phonological context, discourse, or speaker characteristics (e.g., region, gender) predict the realization of /d#j/ in naturalistic speech. In line with previous findings, we hypothesize that [dʒ] is more likely in frequent collocations and at high speech rates, but style-driven effects of region, formality, or gender may also predict this variant.

Effects of presentation delivery rate on errors in simultaneous interpreting: A pilot study

Although the success of information rendition in simultaneous interpreting (SI) is susceptible to many factors, the speed of the source speech (SS) is perceived as one of the most challenging problem triggers. However, previous studies that examine the effects of SS in SI have reported different results. Therefore, this study aims to examine the effects of normal and fast source speech rates on simultaneous interpreting performance through error analysis. In this pilot study, seven error categories are employed, i.e., segment omission, word-and-phrase level omission, addition, unfinished sentence, filled pause, and long pause, which are derived from error classifications by Barik (1971). The first four categories are part of linguistic errors, whereas the last three categories are part of paralinguistic errors. Two videos with a speed of 124-wpm (words per minute) and 184-wpm were used as the source speeches and three professional interpreters with more than seven years of experience were recruited as research participants. It is revealed that the fast speech rate has increased the frequency of errors. Additionally, segment omission appears to be the category mostly impacted by SS speed. Therefore, the result of this study suggests interpreters’ training institutions pay more attention to coping tactics learning and acquisition in their courses. Nevertheless, more replication studies are still required to verify this finding.

The Expressive Balance Effect: Perception and Physiological Responses of Prosody and Gestures

The ability to deliver a speech effectively and persuade the audience is fundamental in the professional landscape. Nonverbal features, such as voice and gestures, are crucial to improving listeners’ perception and information processing in a public presentation. In nonverbal communication research, most studies have mainly examined the individual effects of these features and not their combined influence. Therefore, this study analyzes the direct and interaction effects of intonation, speech rate, and hand gestures on the speakers’ credibility and effectiveness and the participants’ psychophysiological response (attention and arousal). Results showed that the best combination was a moderate intonation at a medium speech rate with a moderate number of hand gestures. These results supported the so-called Expressive Balance Effect. Speakers must maintain the expressive load of the different nonverbal cues in balance to be more effective and credible and enhance the listeners’ cognitive processing. These findings are helpful recommendations for public speakers.

Does speech rate influence intertemporal decisions? an experimental investigation.

This paper experimentally examines the effect of speech rate on intertemporal decisions. In a delay-discounting task, subjects made a series of intertemporal choices between smaller-sooner and larger-delayed rewards and were asked to listen to a voice recording verbalizing the information for payoff options. We manipulated the speech rate of the voice recordings and administered two treatment conditions: Slow and Fast. We did not find an overall treatment effect in the acoustic manipulation.

The phonetic realization of Russian pitch accents in contrastive questions and enumeration contexts

This paper presents the results of a phonetic experiment that compares the acoustic features of rising pitch configurations used in contrastive questions and on non-last elements of a list in enumeration contexts in Russian. 23 native Russian speakers were instructed to read aloud pairs of stimuli with similar segmental structure embedded in larger texts. Significant differences were found between the two syntactic context conditions. In enumeration contexts, both local minima and maxima associated with the prominent syllable had a significantly earlier and more stable alignment, and the slope of the rise between the tonal targets was steeper. In addition, the effect of the speech rate on these acoustic features was tested. The effects of fast and slow reading turned out to be asymmetric. In line with the segmental anchoring hypothesis, no significant effect of fast speech rate on alignment and pitch range was found; only the effect on slope was significant. Conversely, while reading the texts intentionally slowly the participants consistently used melodies with later alignment of local minima and maxima and larger pitch range. On the one hand, these data can be indicative of the interchangeability of stylistically marked pitch accent postulated for the incompleteness contexts in traditional descriptions of Russian intonation. On the other hand, this interpretation cannot account for the fact that the rightward shift in alignment in slow tempo was also found in the contrastive question condition.

Understanding Dialogue: Language Use and Social Interaction

Understanding Dialogue: Language Use and Social Interaction

Rhythmic and speech rate effects in the perception of durational cues.

Listeners' perception of temporal contrasts in spoken language is highly sensitive to contextual information, such as variation in speech rate. The present study tests how rate-dependent perception is also mediated by distal (i.e., temporally removed) rhythmic patterns. In four experiments the role of rhythmic alternations and their interaction with speech rate effects are tested. Experiment1 shows proximal speech rate (contrast) effects obtain based on changes in local context. Experiment2 shows that these effects disappear with the addition of distal rhythmic alternations, indicating that rhythmic grouping shifts listeners' perception, even when proximal context conflicts. Experiments3 and4 explore how orthogonal variation in overall speech rate impacts these effects and finds that trial-to-trial (i.e., global) speech rate variation eliminates rhythmic grouping effects, both with and without variation in proximal (immediately preceding) context. Together, these results suggest a role for rhythmic patterning in listeners' processing of durational cues in speech, which interacts in various ways with proximal, distal, and global rate contexts.

Sounds like a funny joke: Effects of vocal pitch and speech rate on satire liking.

Katz (1996, 2005, 2009) has often emphasized the importance of testing effects of irony in its social context. One social context that has not yet received much attention in the literature is the inherently ironic genre of satirical news. To alert their audiences to irony, satirists can use markers, one of which being prosody. However, little is known about whether variations in prosodic features actually promote satire liking. This study focused on two prosodic features that previous research associated with irony marking: (a) low vocal pitch, and (b) slow speech rate. We conducted two experiments to determine whether a low (vs. high) vocal pitch (Experiment 1; N = 244) and a slow (vs. fast) speech rate (Experiment 2; N = 234) moderated potential effects of satirical (vs. regular) news exposure on perceived humor, enjoyment, and appreciation. Results showed that participants rated satirical news recordings as more humorous than regular news recordings. In both experiments, enjoyment and appreciation of satirical news were mediated by perceived humor, such that there was a suppression effect: while the indirect effect of satirical news exposure on enjoyment and appreciation was positive, the direct effect was negative. Vocal pitch and speech rate did not influence humor ratings. This finding suggests that contextual cues may already sufficiently be at play in signaling the irony in satirical news, therefore supporting Katz's claim (1996, 2005, 2009) that taking social context into account when conducting irony experiments is essential. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved).

Effects of Lecturer Appearance and Speech Rate on Learning Flow and Teaching Presence in Video Learning

Effects of Lecturer Appearance and Speech Rate on Learning Flow and Teaching Presence in Video Learning

Pre-low raising in Cantonese and Thai: Effects of speech rate and vowel quantity.

Although pre-low raising (PLR) has been extensively studied as a type of contextual tonal variation, its underlying mechanism is barely understood. This paper explored the effects of phonetic vs phonological duration on PLR in Cantonese and Thai and examined how speech rate and vowel quantity interact with its realization in these languages, respectively. The results for Cantonese revealed that PLR always occurred before a large falling excursion (i.e., high-low); in other tonal contexts, it was observed more often in faster speech. In the Thai corpus, PLR also occurred before large falling excursions, and there was more PLR in short vowels. These results are discussed in terms of possible accounts of the underlying mechanism of PLR.