Fast Speech Rate Research Articles

Current Issues: A Group Supervisory Approach to Preschool Fluency Therapy

Blended individual-group supervision (BIGS) was described by Murphy and Watson (2004) as a technique to combine both individual and group supervision styles using the tenets of the teaching clinic (Dowling, 1979). The present article uses a modified version of BIGS to supervise student clinicians working with preschool children who exhibit dysfluencies. The therapy techniques used include direct techniques such as speaking in fast and slow rates of speech and choral reading. Parent education is an integral part of the therapy process. This includes providing parents with information about stuttering and fluency enhancing conditions while also giving parents the opportunity to utilize these techniques in the session. Student clinicians learn to incorporate fluency enhancing conditions in sessions and to have close interaction with parents. Therapy for older children (5-year-olds) integrates more direct strategies to reduce dysfluencies. Supervisory meetings are comprised of group meetings, and students come prepared with questions and interact with each other and the clinical supervisor in order to plan and implement therapy.

인문치료의 진단 및 평가: 감각유형에 따른 말속도와 기본주파수의 실험음성학적 분석

The purpose of this study is to examine the correlation between the preferred sensation type and speech sounds, especially on and the speech rates. Data for the sensation types and speech sounds were collected from 36 undergraduate and graduate students (17 male, 19 female). Subjects were asked to read a given text (400 syllables), describe a drawing, and give answers to some questions. We measured speakers` and speech rates. The results show that type V (Visual) has the correlation with the speech rates when type D (Digital) was ruled out, and type A (Auditory) has the correlation with the speech rates when type D was included. Furthermore, the analysis of the mean values of V, A, K (Visual, Auditory, Kinethetic) indicates that type V is characterized with faster speech rates and higher in all parts except for interview and the same is true for that of V, A, K, D (Visual, Auditory, Kinethetic, Digital) in all parts. In conclusion, this study proved that the preferred sensation type has the correlation with and speech rates. Based on the results of this study, and speech rates can be used to analyze the sensation types for individualized education as well as consultation. In addition, this study has great significance in that it lays a foundation for the study on the correlation between a preferred sensation type and speech sounds.

Dual-Task Demands of Hand Movements for Adults with Stroke: A Pilot Study

For adults with stroke, walking while performing a cognitive task can be challenging, resulting in slower walking, poorer cognitive performance, or decreased performance on both tasks. It is not known if dual-task deficits are also present for upper limb movements for adults with stroke. Purpose: To determine if unilateral movements of the affected and less affected hand are compromised when walking or talking. Methods: Nineteen community-dwelling adults with stroke were video- and audiotaped while performing in single- and dual-task conditions. Tasks included repeated, rhythmic hand movements with the affected and less affected hand, walking a narrow pathway, and speaking. For dual-task conditions, movements of each hand were done while walking and while talking. The rate of hand movement, cadence, and speech rate were analyzed using repeated measures analyses of variance. Results: Affected hand movement rate was the same for single- and dual-task conditions. The rate of less affected hand movement was affected by dual-task conditions; this was due to an increase in hand movement rate while talking. Examination of cadence and speech rates revealed that cadence was decreased when moving the affected hand. Speech rate increased when accompanied by hand movements, but post hoc analyses were not significant. Conclusion: For those with stroke, dual-task deficits are seen with slower walking while moving the affected hand. In contrast, hand movements while speaking may have a more complex relationship, with possible faster speech rates in dual-task conditions.

Prosodic effects on phrasing: Clash avoidance in Catalan

This paper empirically investigates the effects of the presence of stress clash on phrasing decisions in Catalan. An interesting fact about Catalan phrasing, initially noted by Oliva (1992) and also reported by Prieto (2005a), is that the presence of a clash in this language can optionally trigger prosodic restructuring. Five native speakers of Central Catalan read 32 stress-clash and non-stress-clash sentence pairs at normal and fast speech rates, for a total of 320 utterances. The results clearly show that speakers adjust prosodic phrasing so that clash situations are avoided. Catalan speakers tend to get around stress clash by deleting the first stress in the clash and grouping the two words into one phonological phrase, thus avoiding potential prosodic breaks between the two words. This shows that the phonological construction of phonological phrases cannot rely exclusively on syntactic information, but rather that metrical structure needs to be accessible. All in all, this article offers empirical support for one of the predictions of metrical phonology, namely that languages tend to alternate between metrically strong and weak syllables and that stress clash situations are avoided crosslinguistically.

Speaking rate characteristics of elementary-school-aged children who do and do not stutter

Purpose To compare articulation and speech rates of school-aged children who do and do not stutter across sentence priming, structured conversation, and narration tasks and to determine factors that predict children's speech and articulation rates. Method 34 children who stutter (CWS) and 34 age- and gender-matched children who do not stutter (CWNS) were divided into younger ( M age = 6;10) and older ( M age = 9;6) subgroups. Speech samples were elicited using the Modeled Sentences, Structured Conversation, and Narration tasks from an experimental version of the Test of Childhood Stuttering ( Gillam, Logan, & Pearson, 2009) . Speech rates (based on both fluent and disfluent utterances), articulation rates (based on only fluent utterances), disfluency frequency, and utterance length were compared across groups and tasks. Results CWNS had faster speech rates than CWS. Older children had faster speech rates than younger children during Modeled Sentences, and their Modeled Sentences speech rates were faster than their Structured Conversation and Narration speech rates. Disfluency frequency predicted speech rate better than age or utterance length for CWS and CWNS. Speech rate was negatively correlated with stuttering severity for CWS. Articulation rates for CWNS and CWS were not significantly different; however, older children had faster articulation rates than younger children, and articulation rates for both age groups were fastest during Modeled Sentences. Conclusions Results provide age-based reference data for the speech and articulation rates of school-aged CWS and CWNS on three TOCS tasks and offer insight into the relative contributions of age, disfluency frequency, and utterance length to children's rate performance. Learning outcomes After reading this paper readers should be able to: (1) summarize the main findings from past studies of children's speech rate and articulation rate; (2) describe how school-aged children who stutter compare to age-matched children who do not stutter with regard to speech rate and articulation rate; (3) explain the extent to which age, speaking task, disfluency frequency, and utterance length affect children's rate performance; (4) discuss the advantages and disadvantages of various approaches to rate measurement.

Stuttering inhibition via visual feedback at normal and fast speech rates

Immediate and drastic reductions in stuttering are found when speech is produced in conjunction with a variety of second signals (for example, auditory choral speech and its permutations, and delayed auditory feedback). Initially, researchers suggested a decreased speech rate as a plausible explanation for the reduction in stuttering as people who stutter produced speech under second signals. However, this explanation was refuted by research findings that demonstrated reductions in stuttering at both normal and fast speech rates under second signals. Recent studies have also demonstrated significant reductions in stuttering from second signals delivered via the visual modality. However, the question as to whether stuttering can be substantially reduced at normal and fast speech rates under visual speech feedback conditions has yet to be answered. The current study investigated stuttering frequency reduction at normal and fast speech rates across different visual speech feedback conditions relative to a no-visual feedback condition. Ten adults who stutter recited memorized tokens of eight to 13 syllables under five visual speech feedback conditions at both normal and fast speech rates. Visual speech feedback conditions consisted of participants viewing the lower portion of their face (that is, lips, jaw, and base of the nose) on a monitor as they produced the aforementioned utterances. Conditions consisted of (1) no-visual feedback condition, (2) 0 ms (simultaneous visual speech feedback), (2) a 50-ms delay, (3) a 200-ms delay, and (4) a 400-ms delay. A significant main effect of visual speech feedback on stuttering frequency was found (p= 0.001) with no significant main effect of speech rate or the interaction between speech rate and visual speech feedback. Relative to the no-visual feedback condition, the feedback conditions produced reductions in stuttering ranging from 27% (0 ms) to 62% (400 ms). Post-hoc comparisons revealed that all of the delay conditions differed significantly from the simultaneous feedback (p= 0.017) and the no-visual feedback conditions (p= 0.0002) while no significant differences between delay conditions (that is, 50, 200, and 400 ms) were observed. The current findings demonstrate the capabilities of visual speech feedback signals to reduce stuttering frequency that is independent of the speaker's rate of speech. Possible strategies are suggested to transfer these findings into naturalistic and clinical settings, though further research is warranted.

Perceptual learning of time-compressed and natural fast speech

Speakers vary their speech rate considerably during a conversation, and listeners are able to quickly adapt to these variations in speech rate. Adaptation to fast speech rates is usually measured using artificially time-compressed speech. This study examined adaptation to two types of fast speech: artificially time-compressed speech and natural fast speech. Listeners performed a speeded sentence verification task on three series of sentences: normal-speed sentences, time-compressed sentences, and natural fast sentences. Listeners were divided into two groups to evaluate the possibility of transfer of learning between the time-compressed and natural fast conditions. The first group verified the natural fast before the time-compressed sentences, while the second verified the time-compressed before the natural fast sentences. The results showed transfer of learning when the time-compressed sentences preceded the natural fast sentences, but not when natural fast sentences preceded the time-compressed sentences. The results are discussed in the framework of theories on perceptual learning. Second, listeners show adaptation to the natural fast sentences, but performance for this type of fast speech does not improve to the level of time-compressed sentences.

Sensory feedback dependence hypothesis in persons who stutter

The present study investigated the role of sensory feedback (auditory, proprioception, and tactile) at the intra- and inter-gestural levels of speech motor coordination in normal and fast speech rate conditions in two groups: (1) persons who stutter (PWS) and (2) those who do not (PNS). Feedback perturbations were carried out with the use of masking noise (auditory), tendon vibration (proprioception), and nonwords that differed in the amount of required tactile lip contact (/api/ + tactile and /awi/ − tactile). Comparisons were also made between jaw-free and jaw-immobilized (with a bite-block) task conditions. It was hypothesized that if PWS depend more strongly on sensory feedback control during speech production, they would show an increase in variability of movement coordination in the combined presence of fast speech rates and feedback perturbations, in particular, when jaw motions are blocked and adaptations in the other articulators are required to achieve the task goals. Significant feedback perturbation effects were found for both groups, but the only significant between-group effect was found at fast speech rates in the jaw-free condition, showing that control speakers were more perturbed at the intra-gestural level of coordination than PWS when simultaneous (auditory, proprioceptive, and tactile) perturbations were present. The findings do not provide support for either the feedback dependency or the sensory deficit hypotheses described in the literature to explain movement characteristics found in fluent speech production of PWS.

Neural Processing during Older Adults' Comprehension of Spoken Sentences: Age Differences in Resource Allocation and Connectivity

Speech comprehension remains largely preserved in older adults despite significant age-related neurophysiological change. However, older adults' performance declines more rapidly than that of young adults when listening conditions are challenging. We investigated the cortical network underlying speech comprehension in healthy aging using short sentences differing in syntactic complexity, with processing demands further manipulated through speech rate. Neural activity was monitored using blood oxygen level-dependent functional magnetic resonance imaging. Comprehension of syntactically complex sentences activated components of a core sentence-processing network in both young and older adults, including the left inferior and middle frontal gyri, left inferior parietal cortex, and left middle temporal gyrus. However, older adults showed reduced recruitment of inferior frontal regions relative to young adults; the individual degree of recruitment predicted accuracy at the more difficult fast speech rate. Older adults also showed increased activity in frontal regions outside the core sentence-processing network, which may have played a compensatory role. Finally, a functional connectivity analysis demonstrated reduced coherence between activated regions in older adults. We conclude that decreased activation of specialized processing regions, and limited ability to coordinate activity between regions, contribute to older adults' difficulty with sentence comprehension under difficult listening conditions.

Comprehension of Speeded Discourse by Younger and Older Listeners

Researchers have argued that older adults are more adversely affected by speeding speech than are younger adults. However, the age effects usually occur when (1) the speech materials are artificially speeded to rates well above those that occur in natural speech; (2) the speeding method introduces distortions that tax the older adult's auditory processes; and (3) the speech materials are simple sentences or very short passages. This study evaluated whether older adults are disadvantaged when listening to extended discourse (10- to 15-min lectures) speeded to a rate near to the limit of normally encountered fast speech (240 words/min) with a minimum of acoustic distortion. Perceptual difficulty was further manipulated by presenting stimuli in either quiet or with a 12-talker background babble. Younger and older adults had more difficulty recalling the details of the discourse and integrating their contexts when stimuli were presented at faster rates and in higher levels of background noise. Although each of these manipulations were found to cause large differences in performance, the age groups were generally found to perform analogously in most conditions. Potentially the availability of semantically rich materials, and the extended durations of the passages, allowed the older adults an opportunity to adjust to the faster speech rates and maintain performance levels similar to younger adults.

Kinematic analysis of articulatory coupling in acquired apraxia of speech post-stroke

Primary objective: Electromagnetic articulography was employed to investigate the strength of articulatory coupling and hence the degree of functional movement independence between individual articulators in apraxia of speech (AOS).Methods and procedures: Tongue-tip, tongue-back and jaw movement was recorded from five speakers with AOS and a concomitant aphasia (M= 53.6 years; SD = 12.60) during /ta, sa, la, ka/ syllable repetitions, spoken at typical and fast rates of speech. Covariance values were calculated for each articulatory pair to gauge the strength of articulatory coupling. The results obtained for each of the participants with AOS were individually compared to those obtained by a control group (n= 12; M= 52.08 years; SD = 12.52). Comparisons were made between the typical rate productions of the control group and the typical and fast rate productions of the participants with AOS.Main outcomes and results: In comparison to the control group, four speakers with AOS exhibited significantly stronger articulatory coupling for alveolar and/or velar speech targets, during typical and/or fast rate conditions, suggesting decreased functional movement independence.Conclusions: The reduction in functional movement independence might have reflected an attempt to simplify articulatory control or a decrease in the ability to differentially control distinct articulatory regions.

A test of speech motor control on word level productions: The SPA Test (Dutch: Screening Pittige Articulatie)

The primary objective of this article is to study whether an assessment instrument specifically designed to assess speech motor control on word level productions would be able to add differential diagnostic speech characteristics between people who clutter and people who stutter. It was hypothesized that cluttering is a fluency disorder in which speech motor control on word level is disturbed in high speech rate, resulting in errors in flow of speech and sequencing. An assessment instrument on speech motor coordination on word level was developed and validated. In an elicitation procedure, repetitions of complex multi-syllabic words at a fast speech rate were obtained from 47 dysfluent participants (mean age 24.3; SD 10.25, range 14.2–47.4 yrs) and 327 controls (mean age 25.56 yrs; SD 8.49; age range 14.3–50.1). Speech production was judged on articulatory accuracy, smooth-flow (coarticulation, flow and sequencing) and articulatory rate. Results from people who clutter (PWC) and people who stutter (PWS) were compared to normative data based on control group data. PWC produced significantly more flow and sequencing errors compared to PWS. Further research is needed in order to study speech motor control in spontaneous speech of people who clutter.

Bite-block perturbation in people who stutter: Immediate compensatory and delayed adaptive processes

This exploratory study investigated sensory-motor mechanisms in five people who stutter (PWS) and five people who do not (PNS). Lip kinematic and coordination data were recorded as they produced bi-syllabic nonwords at two rates (normal and fast) in three conditions (jaw-free, immediately after insertion of a bite-block, and after a 10-min accommodation period). At normal speech rates, effects of bite-blocks on lip kinematics were similar for both PWS and PNS speakers showing larger amplitudes, peak velocities, shorter durations and more stable movement cycle patterns. However, at fast speech rates upper lip responses of PWS exhibited larger amplitudes and peak velocities. At both speech rates, the presence of a bite-block changed movement coordination patterns only for PNS. However, at fast speech rates bite-blocks decreased variability of coordination patterns for both groups. No adaptive changes in movement stability were found for either group, but a practice-related increase in lower lip peak velocity was found at normal speech rates. These findings indicate that bite-block perturbation did not exacerbate any hypothesized limitation or difficulty in controlling individual articulatory movements or their coordination in PWS. The results also support the position that specific motor control strategies are used by PWS as compared to PNS to compensate for bite-block perturbations under increased speech rate demands. Learning outcomes: The reader will be able to: (1) distinguish between compensatory and adaptive responses to bite-block perturbation; (2) explain the measurement of articulatory stability; (3) summarize the potential role of motor control strategies in people who stutter; and (4) discuss the assumptions of the motor skills approach to stuttering.

Lingual Kinematics During Sentence Production in Adults with Dysarthria at 6 and 12 Months Post Stroke

AbstractThe aim of the present study was to investigate lingual kinematics during sentence production in dysarthric individuals. Three males, aged between 35 and 69 years with dysarthric speech post stroke were assessed at 6 months and 12 months post stroke using the electromagnetic articulography AG-200. A group of 15 non-neurologically impaired males, aged between 36 and 72 years (mean = 56.33 years, SD = 15.59) served as the control speakers. Two target sentences, “Tess told Dan to stay f it” and “Karl got a croaking frog,” were used to measure tongue-tip and tongueback movements, respectively, at habitual and fast rates of speech. Articulatory kinematic data, namely duration, distance, velocity, acceleration, and deceleration, were obtained for both sentences. Detailed profiles of the articulatory kinematics exhibited by each of the individual dysarthric speakers at 6 and 12 months post stroke compared to controls are presented. Results showed that one of the dysarthric speakers exhibited kinematic pa...

An AAC Application Using Speaking Partner Speech Recognition to Automatically Produce Contextually Relevant Utterances: Objective Results

The purpose of this study was to evaluate the efficacy of a computer program, Converser, which uses the speech recognition of the speaking partner to predict contextually appropriate utterances and to store relevant noun phrases. The dyads (which consisted of a program user and a speaking partner) tested Converser in two communication tasks: a conversation and an interview. Two conditions were applied: A simple communication aid with an alphabet layout without Converser (alpha-only condition), and an identical aid with Converser (alpha-converser condition). Objective measurements were made concerning the program user's rate and Converser usage. The results showed that the alpha-converser condition generated a faster communication rate than the alpha-only condition. Also, the program users utilized the stored noun phrases in their productions more than the full utterances. Converser allowed for periodic instances of a fast rate of speech, which appeared to have a positive impact on communication.

Perceptual rate normalization in naturally produced rate-varied speech

The perception of voicing categories is affected by speaking rate, so that listeners' category boundaries on a VOT continuum shift to a lower value when syllable duration decreases [Miller and Volaitis, Percept. Psychophys. 46, 505-512 (1989); Volaitis and Miller, J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 92, 723-735 (1992)]. Previous rate normalization effects have been found using artificially varied stimuli. This study examines the effect of speech rate on voicing categorization in naturally produced rate-varied speech. The stimuli contained natural decreases in VOT with faster speech rates so that VOT values for /b/ and /p/ overlapped at the fastest rates. Consonant identification results showed that the rate effects on the perceptual boundary between /p/ and /b/ very closely matched the effects of rate on the productions, though there was a small mismatch with fast rate productions whereby voiced stops were systematically miscategorized as voiceless. Another group of listeners judged the goodness of the consonant, indicating that best exemplars were rate-varied and shifted away from the /p/-/b/ boundary. These results are discussed in light of exemplar-based and abstractionist models of speech perception.

Voice and Persuasion in a Banking Telemarketing Context

Voice has been neglected in research on advertising and persuasion. The present study examined the influence of voice and sex on the credibility of the voice source in a banking telemarketing context as well as with regards to the attitude toward the advertisement, and subjects' behavioral intention. An experiment using voices of a man and a woman was conducted. A recorded mock-telemarketing message consisted of an advertisement for an ATM card offered by a Canadian bank. Subjects were undergraduate students (N=399; 71.6% women, 28.4% men; M age=26.5 yr., SD = 7.4). They completed a questionnaire after hearing the message in telemarketing conditions. Analysis indicated a moderate intensity, an unmarked intonation, and a fast speech rate are associated with a more credible source than the other combinations. Sex was not a significant moderator in the relationship between voice characteristics and source credibility. Voice characteristics significantly affected attitudes toward the advertisement and behavioral intention.

Difficulties Understanding Compressed Speech in Elderly Listeners With Mild-to-Moderate Hearing Loss

In this work we evaluated the difficulties in understanding rapid speech (normal, fast and very fast rates) in elderly listeners with and without hearing loss (presbycusis and moderate hearing loss). Rapid speech is common in daily communication, yet few studies have been conducted to assess this problem in Spanish-speaking listeners, as has been done for English speakers. We compared the recognition of sentences presented at normal, fast, and very fast speech rates in 3 groups of listeners. Recognition scores were correlated to their audiological measures and the score obtained on a Communication Difficulties Questionnaire. Compressed sentences were more poorly perceived in the 2 groups of listeners with hearing loss, compared to the normal group. Moreover, we obtained significant correlations among the 3 measures: recognition of rapid speech, the audiological measures, and the score in the Questionnaire. Our results suggest that rapid-speech recognition skills deteriorate in the presence of hearing loss, whether due to presbycusis or other moderate hearing loss in all frequency ranges.

Speech perception in adverse listening conditions in Arabic-Hebrew bilinguals

Relatively little is known about the combined effects of adverse listening conditions on bilinguals' speech perception. This study examines the effect of (1) speech rate and (2) noise, separately and combined, on bilinguals' speech perception in L1 and L2. Participants were university students, native speakers of Arabic (L1), with Hebrew L2. Speech perception tests consisted of 64 CHABA sentences adapted to Hebrew and to Arabic (32 sentences per language). In each language, speech perception was evaluated under four conditions: quiet + normal speech rate; noise + normal speech rate; quiet + fast speech rate; fast speech rate + noise. The results showed that under optimal conditions, our native speakers of Arabic in Israel had similar achievements in Arabic (L1) and Hebrew (L2). Under difficult conditions, however, their performance was poorer in L2 than in L1: background noise had a greater detrimental effect than speech rate, and the combined detrimental effect of speech rate and background noise was greater for L2 than for L1. These results highlight the importance of attention to acoustic conditions and speaker related characteristics when testing speech perception in general and especially in the case of bilinguals.

The effects of temporal modification of second speech signals on stuttering inhibition at two speech rates in adults

The recovery of ‘gestural’ speech information via the engagement of mirror neurons has been suggested to be the key agent in stuttering inhibition during the presentation of exogenous second speech signals. Based on this hypothesis, we expect the amount of stuttering inhibition to depend on the ease of recovery of exogenous speech gestures. To examine this possibility, linguistically non-congruent second speech signals were temporally compressed and expanded in two experiments. In Experiment 1, 12 participants who stutter read passages aloud at normal and fast speech rates while listening to second speech signals that were 0, 40, 80% compressed, and 40 and 80% expanded. Except for the 80% compressed speech signal, all other stimuli induced significant stuttering inhibition relative to the control condition. The 80% compressed speech signal was the first exogenously presented speech signal that failed to significantly reduce stuttering frequency by 60–70% that has been the case in our research over the years. It was hypothesized that at a compression ratio of 80%, exogenous speech signals generated too many gestures per unit time to allow for adequate gestural recovery via mirror neurons. However, considering that 80% compressed signal was also highly unintelligible, a second experiment was conducted to further examine whether the effects of temporal compression on stuttering inhibition are mediated by speech intelligibility. In Experiment 2, 10 participants who stutter read passages at a normal rate while listening to linguistically non-congruent second speech signals that were compressed by 0, 20, 40, 60, and 80%. Results revealed that 0 and 20% compressed speech signals induced approximately 52% stuttering inhibition. In contrast, compression ratios of 40% and beyond induced only 27% stuttering inhibition although 40 and 60% compressed signals were perceptually intelligible. Our findings suggest that recovery of gestural information is affected by temporal compression before intelligibility starts to decrease.