Disfluency Types Research Articles

FluencyBank Timestamped: An Updated Data Set for Disfluency Detection and Automatic Intended Speech Recognition.

This work introduces updated transcripts, disfluency annotations, and word timings for FluencyBank, which we refer to as FluencyBank Timestamped. This data set will enable the thorough analysis of how speech processing models (such as speech recognition and disfluency detection models) perform when evaluated with typical speech versus speech from people who stutter (PWS). We update the FluencyBank data set, which includes audio recordings from adults who stutter, to explore the robustness of speech processing models. Our update (semi-automated with manual review) includes new transcripts with timestamps and disfluency labels corresponding to each token in the transcript. Our disfluency labels capture typical disfluencies (filled pauses, repetitions, revisions, and partial words), and we explore how speech model performance compares for Switchboard (typical speech) and FluencyBank Timestamped. We present benchmarks for three speech tasks: intended speech recognition, text-based disfluency detection, and audio-based disfluency detection. For the first task, we evaluate how well Whisper performs for intended speech recognition (i.e., transcribing speech without disfluencies). For the next tasks, we evaluate how well a Bidirectional Embedding Representations from Transformers (BERT) text-based model and a Whisper audio-based model perform for disfluency detection. We select these models, BERT and Whisper, as they have shown high accuracies on a broad range of tasks in their language and audio domains, respectively. For the transcription task, we calculate an intended speech word error rate (isWER) between the model's output and the speaker's intended speech (i.e., speech without disfluencies). We find isWER is comparable between Switchboard and FluencyBank Timestamped, but that Whisper transcribes filled pauses and partial words at higher rates in the latter data set. Within FluencyBank Timestamped, isWER increases with stuttering severity. For the disfluency detection tasks, we find the models detect filled pauses, revisions, and partial words relatively well in FluencyBank Timestamped, but performance drops substantially for repetitions because the models are unable to generalize to the different types of repetitions (e.g., multiple repetitions and sound repetitions) from PWS. We hope that FluencyBank Timestamped will allow researchers to explore closing performance gaps between typical speech and speech from PWS. Our analysis shows that there are gaps in speech recognition and disfluency detection performance between typical speech and speech from PWS. We hope that FluencyBank Timestamped will contribute to more advancements in training robust speech processing models.

Disfluencies as a Window into Pragmatic Skills in Russian-Hebrew Bilingual Autistic and Non-Autistic Children

AbstractThere is little research on the production of speech disfluencies such as silent pauses, repetitions, self-corrections, and filled pauses (e.g., eh, em) in monolingual autistic children, and there is no data on this crucial part of speech production in bilingual autistic children. This study aims to address this gap by examining disfluency production in bilingual autistic and non-autistic children across two linguistically distinct languages, HL-Russian (the home language) and SL-Hebrew (the societal language). Fifty-one bilingual Russian-Hebrew-speaking autistic and non-autistic children aged 5–9 (autistic: n = 21; non-autistic: n = 30), matched for age and non-verbal intelligence, participated in picture-based story-generation tasks (LITMUS MAIN, Gagarina et al., ZAS Papers in Linguistics, 63:1–36, 2019). Audio recordings of narrative samples were transcribed, coded, and scored for eleven disfluency types using CLAN tools. The non-autistic group produced higher overall disfluency rate than the autistic group. The autistic group exhibited fewer filled and silent pauses than the non-autistic group in HL-Russian. Furthermore, non-autistic children manifested varied distribution of disfluency types across languages, while autistic children displayed more consistent patterns across languages. In summary, we replicated findings from previous research on monolinguals only partly, as no between-group difference in filled pauses was found in SL-Hebrew. Additionally, bilingual autistic children exhibited language-universal patterns of disfluency production, whereas their non-autistic peers displayed language-specific patterns.

Weakness of Fluency in Speech Production Made by Iraqi College Students of English

Based on their investigation, the current research examines the disfluency in speech production produced by Iraqi students at the Department of English - Open Educational College- Fallujah Study Center. The aims of this study are to identify the various kinds of disfluency, as well as the prevalent kinds and similarities and differences between the students' disfluencies. This kind of study is qualitative. The research utilizes disfluent utterances from students in the third and fourth stages as its data source.The researcher gathers data by attentively listening to the audio recording, writing the audio scripts, administering a questionnaire, identifying the data, and choosing the data that deals with various kinds of deficiency. The disfluencies are analyzed by the researcher using the theories of Fox Tree, Levelt, Shriberg, and Clark and Wasow. The findings show that students make three different kinds of disfluencies that were produced by students in the English Department at OEC, overt repair, hesitation, and repetition.The duration of study done by third and fourth-year students is used to analyze them. Hesitancy is the most prevalent type of disfluency that students experience most learners have. The overall number of disfluencies produced by learners in the third and fourth stages then makes a difference. First, the researcher identified commonalities between the three forms of disfluencies: overt repair, hesitation, and repetition. Second, student's hesitancy is the most common form of disfluency.

The types of repairs, categories of repairs, repairs in doctor-patient communication, and repair strategies from the perspective of psycholinguistics

The nature of human spontaneous speech brings about speech errors and typical disfluencies such as hesitation, pause, silence, repetition, and repair. Recent studies in spoken dialects across many countries reported that speakers produce speech errors or unclear expressions in daily verbal communication. When speakers realize their utterances are erroneous or inappropriate, they frequently make pervasive, highly systematic, and measurable repairs in conversation. Some researchers claim that the repairs in conversation are ubiquitous. This occurrence reflects that individuals make great efforts to ensure their utterances are understandable and acceptable to the listeners. This also triggered the question of what role do speech repairs play in building mutual understanding and enhancing therapeutic relationships between doctors and patients during clinical interactions. Most of these studies have predominantly focused on first (L1) and second language (L2) acquisition, while limited studies have investigated repairs in clinical settings. Repair is a key mechanism for building mutual understanding in clinical interactions and contributes to better therapeutic relationships and treatment adherence. Doctors and patients attempt to make their utterances understandable and acceptable to attain their purposes in the clinical encounter. Nevertheless, some studies do not describe the categories of repair strategies and the trouble source, while only limited research mentioned the types of repair. This gives no insights into the specific strategies and trouble sources in the communication. This study, therefore, sets out to review the types of repairs, categories of repairs, repairs in doctor-patient communication, and repair strategies in attempting to explain the repair mechanism that works in the communication setting between doctor-patient interactions from the perspective of epistemic, pragmatics, conversation analysis, and psycholinguistics.

Disfluencies as a window to macrostructure performance in the narrative of bilingual children

Disfluencies mirror processes of speech production and when examined in both languages of bilingual children, can provide valuable information regarding their linguistic skills. The aim of this study is to characterize the rates and the types of disfluencies across episodes of a narrative as well as across different story grammar (SG) elements in participants’ home language (Russian) and societal language (Hebrew) as a reflection of narrative macrostructure skills. Twenty bilingual Russian-Hebrew children aged 60–78 months produced narratives in Russian and Hebrew using the wordless picture book Frog, Where Are You? (Mayer, 1969). Narratives were transcribed, divided into five episodes, and coded for main SG elements (Character + Setting, Initiating event, Internal response, Plan, Attempt and Consequence). Four types of disfluencies (silent pauses, filled pauses, repetitions, and self-corrections) were analyzed in relation to each SG element per episode in both languages. Overall children produced more SG elements in Russian with a finer analysis showing that Initiating Event, Character and Setting differed across languages while Attempt, Plan and Internal response were similar. Disfluencies significantly impacted macrostructure differently across languages such that in Russian, a high percentage of disfluencies was associated with higher production of Character + Setting and Plan, whereas in Hebrew it was associated with lower production of Attempt and Consequence. The present research suggests that disfluency has impact on macrostructure, and consequently on overall narrative quality differently across the languages. The theoretical contribution may shed light on the understanding of planning and formulation processes among bilingual children. The application of the results may relate to these processes impacting diagnosis and/or intervention protocols in bilingual children.

Artificial disfluency detection, uh no, disfluency generation for the masses

Existing approaches for disfluency detection typically require the existence of large annotated datasets. However, current datasets for this task are limited, suffer from class imbalance, and lack some types of disfluencies that are encountered in real-world scenarios. At the same time, augmentation techniques for disfluency detection are not able to model complex types of disfluencies. This limits such approaches to only performing pre-training since the generated data are not indicative of disfluencies that occur in real scenarios and, as a result, cannot be directly used for training disfluency detection models, as we experimentally demonstrate. This imposes significant constraints on the usefulness of such approaches in practice since real disfluencies still have to be collected in order to train the models. In this work, we propose Large-scale ARtificial Disfluency Generation (LARD), a method for automatically generating artificial disfluencies, and more specifically repairs, from fluent text. Unlike existing augmentation techniques, LARD can simulate all the different and complex types of disfluencies. In addition, it incorporates contextual embeddings into the disfluency generation to produce realistic, context-aware artificial disfluencies. LARD can be used effectively for training disfluency detection models, bypassing the requirement of annotated disfluent data. Our empirical evaluation shows that LARD outperforms existing rule-based augmentation methods and increases the accuracy of existing disfluency detectors. In addition, experiments demonstrate that the proposed method can be effectively used in a low-resource setup.

Could linguistic and cognitive factors, degree of autistic traits and sex predict speech disfluencies in autistic young adults and controls?

ABSTRACT This study aimed to evaluate the effect of linguistic complexity and individual background variables (i.e. linguistic and cognitive abilities, degree of autistic traits, and sex) on speech disfluencies in autistic young adults and controls. Thirty-two 19- to 33-year-old autistic adults and 35 controls participated in this study. The frequency of disfluencies and stuttering severity were evaluated based on a narrative speech task. Linguistic complexity was assessed by evaluating the syntactic structures of the narratives. Cognitive and linguistic abilities were assessed using the General Ability Index (GAI), Verbal Comprehension Index (VCI) and Perceptual Reasoning Index (PRI) from the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale IV. Autistic traits were measured using the Autism Spectrum Quotient (AQ). Multiple-linear regression analyses (syntactic complexity, GAI, AQ, sex, and group status as predictors) showed that (a) syntactic complexity predicted total and stuttering-like disfluencies and stuttering severity, (b) GAI predicted typical disfluencies, and (c) sex predicted total, typical, and stuttering-like disfluencies. Additional correlation analyses revealed negative association between PRI and disfluencies in the control group but not in the autistic group. No connection was found between AQ and disfluencies. It seems that while some connections between disfluencies and individual cognitive features were found, some of the possible contributing factors for greater speech disfluency might differ between autistic and typical speakers.

The relationship between executive function, age of L2 acquisition and speech disfluencies in bilinguals

Disfluencies signal errors in speech processes. Research in typically fluent monolinguals indicates a correlation between disfluencies and specific executive function (EF), including cognitive flexibility, inhibitory control, working memory (WM), and attention. However, these relationships have not been systematically explored in bilinguals. This study investigates the relationship between these EF components, age of language acquisition and disfluencies in bilinguals. Two types of disfluencies were examined: stalling, where articulation is delayed until the speech plan is ready, and advancing, that is, the articulation of incomplete speech plans. A total of 120 English speech samples based on simulated job interviews from 20 typically fluent adult Spanish-English bilinguals were transcribed and coded for disfluencies. The Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale Digit span was used to measure cognitive flexibility/inhibitory control, and the Delis-Kaplan Executive Function Color-Word Interference Test was used to assess WM/attention. Findings indicate correlations between stalling disfluencies and cognitive flexibility/inhibitory control, advancing disfluencies and WM/attention, and age of acquisition and both stalling and advancing disfluencies.

Associations between social anxiety, physiological reactivity, and speech disfluencies in autistic young adults and controls

IntroductionThe aim of this study was to examine possible associations of social anxiety (SA) and speaking-related physiological reactivity with the frequencies of a) total disfluencies, b) typical disfluencies, and c) stuttering-like disfluencies, as well as d) stuttering-severity in autistic young adults and controls. MethodsThirty-two autistic young adults and 35 controls participated in this study. Participants were presented with video clips (viewing condition) and were then asked to talk about the videos (narrating condition). SA was measured by the self-report Social Phobia and Anxiety Inventory (SPAI). Speaking-related physiological reactivity was measured by the electrodermal activity (EDA), an index of emotional arousal. The speech samples from the narrating condition were analyzed for type and frequency of speech disfluencies and used for determining the stuttering severity. SA and speaking-related physiological reactivity were compared between the groups. Correlation between SA, physiological reactivity, disfluency frequencies, and stuttering severity were tested separately for both groups. ResultsNo between-group differences were found in the overall SA, yet differences were found in SPAI subscales of social interaction, group interaction, and avoidance, as well as in agoraphobia. Both groups had higher physiological arousal in narrating condition in comparison to the video viewing condition, yet there was no between-group difference in the reactivity. No associations were found between SPAI measures, physiological reactivity, disfluency frequencies, and stuttering severity in the autistic group. In the control group, a negative association was found between physiological reactivity and total and typical disfluency frequencies. ConclusionsSA or speaking-related physiological reactivity were not associated with disfluency frequencies or stuttering severity in autistic persons. Negative association between physiological reactivity and disfluency frequencies found in the control group may indicate that the physiological arousal may impact the speech production process by reducing the overt disfluencies.

Linguistic Disfluencies in Korean-English Bilingual Children in the Narrative Generation and Retell Task

Objectives: The purpose of this study was to examine the frequency and types of linguistic disfluencies that are produced by typically developing bilingual Korean-English (KE) speaking children and to investigate whether their disfluent speech is mediated by language produced and/or language exposure duration.Methods: Nineteen bilingual KE speaking children (12 boys, 7 girls) and twenty-one monolingual Korean speaking children (8 boys, 13 girls) aged 6-9 participated in this study. Narratives were elicited using story generation and retell tasks in each language. The frequency and types of linguistic disfluencies (fillers, repetitions, revisions, and pauses) were analyzed.Results: The bilingual group showed a significantly higher rate of total disfluency, fillers, and repetitions than the monolingual group. There was no significant difference in the rates of disfluency between narrative task types. In terms of the language produced, the bilingual group produced more revisions and more disfluencies in Korean than in English during the story generation task. In the retell task, there was a significant difference in the total disfluency rate, fillers, and revisions depending on the language the child was speaking. A significant negative correlation between English language exposure duration and the total disfluency rate was found.Conclusion: Bilingual KE speaking children showed higher disfluency rates than monolingual peers in story generation and retell tasks. Results showed that the disfluency can be influenced by the grammatical structure of the language being spoken and the levels of language experience. Results suggest the exposure duration to second language, language proficiency, and morphological distinctions between two languages need to be considered for assessment and intervention.

Disfluencies and directionality in simultaneous interpreting: A corpus study comparing into-B and into-A interpretations from the European Parliament

Although directionality in interpreting has attracted considerable scholarly interest, to date, there are no observational studies providing empirical evidence on the directionality effect in the performance of professional interpreters who regularly work in both directions. Our aim is to partially fill this gap by exploring the relationship between disfluencies and directionality in simultaneous interpreting. To this end, we compare A-B and B/C-A interpretations from plenary debates of the European Parliament. Using English and Polish subcorpora extracted from the EP-Poland corpus, we performed quantitative analyses focusing on three types of disfluencies: anomalous pauses, hesitation markers, and false starts. Our initial assumption was that, in line with the prevalent belief, cognitive load is lower for into-A interpreting. Accordingly, we hypothesised that into-B interpretations should exhibit significantly more disfluencies. However, we have found no directionality effects related to disfluencies. Therefore, our results do not support the advantage of into-A interpreting. This finding raises some doubts about the legitimacy of favouring interpreting into the native language to the extent it is done now in many institutions.

Pragmatic function of speech disfluencies in high-functioning children with autism spectrum disorder

Disfluencies in speech are usually viewed as manifestation of problems at the level of inner cognitive processes underlying speech production. However, it has been suggested that some types of disfluencies may also have a pragmatic function. The current study examines the distribution of disfluencies and speech rate in spontaneous speech of 10 high-functioning children with autism spectrum disorder (diagnosed as Asperger syndrome or high-functional autism) as compared to the typically developing controls. The task of participants was to retell the cartoon which they had previously watched. Their speech was audio recorded and transcribed. The duration of the analyzed speech segment was 60 seconds. Our results show that there is no significant difference in the total number of disfluencies between the two groups. Furthermore, participants of both groups produced the same types of disfluencies. Given that disfluencies reflect troubles in speech planning, these findings indicate that disfluencies are indeed a universal phenomenon in speech production. As regards different types of disfluencies, our study shows that participants with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) produced significantly more disfluent silent pauses and significantly fewer filled disfluencies than the controls. As has already been suggested in the literature, this could be due to the deficiency in the pragmatic ability of individuals with ASD. That is, individuals with ASD are less engaged in the maintenance of speech flow, which will result in more silent pauses.

Oral reading tasks as proficiency indicators

Abstract This study aims to explore the potential of oral reading tasks to establish learners’ proficiency when compiling learner corpora. Informed by research on oral reading fluency, we selected a text containing a variety of linguistic features and submitted it to 68 English learners in Taiwan, who were interviewed for the construction of a large spoken corpus of L2 English across proficiency levels. Their proficiency was rated by trained Common European Framework of Reference (CEFR; Council of Europe, 2001, 2018, 2020) raters and ranged from A1 to B2. The performances in the reading passage were analyzed for reading rate and reading disfluencies. The relationship between reading measures and language scores was analyzed using spine plots, revealing a strong association between reading rate and language level. The number of disfluencies did not show a significant association with language level when all disfluencies were counted together. However, when different types of disfluencies were treated separately, false starts were found to be associated with language level (even though the relationship was less clear than the one reported between reading rate and language level). The study demonstrates that including a carefully selected reading passage among the tasks when compiling spoken learner corpora may be an efficient way of collecting data relating to learner performance in speech.

A case study of bilingual neurogenic stuttering: Measures of fluency, emotion, and articulation rate

IntroductionThis study explores the features of bilingual neurogenic stuttering and the potential connection between emotion and articulation rate on speech disfluencies. MethodThe participant is a 59-year old, Yiddish-English bilingual male with a moderate non-fluent aphasia. Thirty-two narratives (16 in each language), elicited using cue words, were analyzed for frequency of disfluency, type of disfluency (stuttering vs. non-stuttering-like), word-type (content vs. function), within-word location of disfluency, and occurrence of accessory behaviors. Additionally, the percentage and type of emotion (positive vs. negative) expressed, and articulation rate (fluent syllables spoken/duration of fluent utterances) was assessed. ResultsDisfluency occurred in each language with approximately equal frequency. The most common stuttering-like disfluencies were repetitions (monosyllabic, sound, and syllable) and prolongations. The most common non-stuttering-like disfluencies were self-correction/revisions, phrase and multisyllabic word repetitions, and pauses (silent and filled). In both languages, disfluencies occurred on both content and function words, but primarily content words, and in any position of the word, although primarily initial position. No accessory behaviors were noted. There was a similar amount of emotion words used in each language although the first acquired language, L1/Yiddish, had an overall more positive tone, and his second acquired language, L2/English, had a more negative tone. Additionally, there was a negative relationship between emotion and the number of disfluencies in L1/Yiddish, and a positive relationship in L2/English. A faster articulation rate was found in his native and more proficient language, Yiddish, than English. There was a negative relationship between articulation rate and the number of disfluencies in L1/Yiddish, and a positive relationship in L2/English. ConclusionsCross-linguistics differences for emotion and articulation rate demonstrates that these aspects impact on fluency and contributes to the disfluencies in each language. Clinical implications of the study demonstrates the importance of assessment of bilingual (i.e., proficiency and dominance) and fluency features of each language in the diagnostic process and the significance of considering emotional processes and articulation rate as part of a comprehensive intervention plan for acquired stuttering.

A preliminary investigation of stutteringand typical disfluencies in bilingual Polish‑English adults who stutter: A multiple cases approach

This study analyzes the frequency of stuttering and typical disfluencies in Polish‑English bilingual adults who stutter during cross‑linguistic dialogue, monologue, and oral reading contexts. Additionally, the relationship between English proficiency and stuttering and typical disfluency frequencies was examined. The study aims to contribute to the body of research regarding differential considerations between monolingual and bilinguals who stutter. Data collection took place via video conferencing. Participants first completed an English proficiency cloze test, where they entered missing words in a short English text. Following this, randomized dialogue, monologue, and oral reading speech samples in Polish and English were collected. The correlation between cloze test scores and frequency of stuttering and typical disfluency in the English samples was also examined. All participants experienced more stuttering in English (L2) than Polish (L1) during dialogue. Overall, participants had increased stuttering in L2 for at least one speaking task. Seventy one percent of participants had increased typical disfluencies in L2 for dialogue and monologue. Most participants evidenced an increase in stuttering and typical disfluencies in L2 compared to L1. The results suggest that language proficiency may share a relationship between frequency of stuttering and typical disfluencies, highlighting the importance of collecting cross‑linguistic speech data during assessment to reach clinical decisions related to fluency disorders in bilingual populations.

Speaking Disfluency of an English Major Students at One Public University in Indonesia

This study focused on investigating speaking disfluency of an English major students at one public university in Jambi, Indonesia in the academic year 2022/2023. The researcher applied qualitative method with a case study approach to carry out this study and as the way of collecting the data. Four first year students of English education study program consisting of two males and two females were recruited as participants of this research project. To identify the types of disfluencies produced by the students, the researcher gave them a video from YouTube with the title “Ten mistakes to avoid when defending your thesis” from Ranywayz Random YouTube channel and asked them to retell the content of the video using their own words. After listening, audiotaping, and transcribing their speaking, the disfluencies encountered were analyzed by using Gleason and Ratner theory. The students’ disfluencies were then classified into some types such as hesitation, repetition, false starts, and fillers. Each type of speech disfluency would be discussed in the results and discussion sections.

Speech disfluencies in children with developmental dyslexia: How do they differ from typical development?

Disfluency is a multifactorial concept that can be linked to several of the language production levels, in both typical and atypical populations. In children, the language system is still developing and few studies have explored disfluency patterns. In typical development (TD), in particular, studies have shown discrepancies according to the language being considered. In neurodevelopmental disorders, such as developmental dyslexia (DD), it is still unclear whether the pattern of disfluency is similar to TD. To analyse the type of disfluency and their evolution in French children aged 8-12 years. Also to compare the pattern of disfluency in DD and TD, and to test whether disfluencies were correlated with reading difficulties. A total of 25 children with DD and 21 children with TD aged 8-12.6 years produced an autobiographical narrative. Seven types of disfluencies were coded: part-word repetitions; repetitions of monosyllabic words; other types of repetitions (words and phrases); filled pauses; revisions-substitutions; revisions-additions; and abandoned utterances. We compared the proportion of each disfluency in DD and TD. Spearman correlations were then performed between disfluencies, reading performance and age. The results showed that both DD and TD children mainly produced filled pauses, repetitions of monosyllabic words and substitutions. Both groups displayed a high rate of disfluency (> 10%). No correlations with age were found. Correlations with reading performance were significant in the TD group only. The study showed that DD is not characterized by a specific pattern of disfluency. Additionally, disfluency rates were similar in children aged 8-12 years. In contrast to other languages, the current study suggests that French-speaking children have a high rate of disfluency. The study also suggests that disfluency should be interpreted with caution in DD, given that TD children also have a high rate of disfluency. Therefore, it seems important to adapt the pathological threshold of disfluency to the language being spoken in order to avoid an overestimation of the prevalence of these deficits in French-speaking children. What is already known on this subject TD children produce a high rate of disfluency, which is also influenced by the language being spoken. No study looked at the effect of DD on disfluency production. Nonetheless, problems in reading comprehension and reduced reading experience may impact lexical development and speech fluency. What this paper adds to the existing knowledge In our study, both groups (French-speaking children) produced a substantial amount of disfluency as compared with other languages (> 10%). Additionally, the pattern of disfluency was similar in TD and DD (namely, filled pauses, prolongations repetitions of monosyllabic words and substitutions). In the DD group, disfluency production was not correlated with reading performance. What are the potential or actual clinical implications of this work? These results indicate that it is crucial to consider the language being spoken when examining disfluency in order to avoid an overestimation of language difficulties in some languages, such as in French. Moreover, the production of disfluencies in DD should not be considered as language dysfunction since the pattern of disfluency what quite similar in TD and DD, and did not correlate with their reading difficulties.

Unique Patterns of Bilingual Speech: Factors Affecting Disfluency Rates in Russian-Hebrew Bilingual Children.

Bilingual children often demonstrate a high rate of disfluencies, which might impact the diagnostic evaluation of fluency disorders; however, research on the rates and types of disfluencies in bilinguals' two languages is limited. The purpose of this research is to profile disfluencies of two types, stuttering-like disfluencies (SLDs) and other disfluencies (ODs), in the speech of Russian-Hebrew bilingual typically developing children, focusing on cross-linguistic differences and the effect of language proficiency in both languages. Spontaneous narratives based on the Frog, Where Are You? (Mayer, 1969) picture book were collected in both languages from 40 bilingual Russian-Hebrew children aged 5;6-6;6 (years;months). The transcribed narratives were coded for SLD (sound, syllable, and monosyllabic word repetitions) and OD (multisyllabic word/phrase repetitions, interjections, and revisions), and their frequencies per 100 syllables were calculated. Overall, most children had a percentage of SLD and OD below the cutoff point and within the existing criteria for stuttering diagnosis established based on monolingual data, but several children exceeded this stuttering criterion. Monosyllabic word repetitions (part of SLD) and interjections (part of OD) were more frequent in Hebrew than in Russian. Lower proficiency was associated with a higher percentage of monosyllabic word repetitions and of interjections in both languages. Bilingual disfluency criteria are needed, since based on the existing monolingual criteria, some children might be erroneously assessed as children who stutter, thus leading to overdiagnosis. The results support the claim that proficiency is an important factor in the production of disfluencies.

SPEECH DISFLUENCY AS SEEN IN AUTURO GAVINO’S BEFORE ALL OTHERS KETIDAKFASIHAN BERBICARA YANG DITEMUKAN DIDALAM FILM BEFORE ALL OTHERS OLEH AUTURO GAVINO

This study aimed at determining the types of speech disfluency and the most dominant of speech disfluency as seen in Autoro Gavino’s movie Before All Others. The method used in this study was a qualitative method to determine the types of speech disfluency and the quantitative method was used to count the most frequent types found in Before All Others movie. The data in this study was taken from the Before All Others movie and the data form of utterances. The result show that there were 64 utterances showed eight types of speech disfluency in Before All Others. Those types were silent pause (13), filled pause (7), repetition (27), interjection (10), un-retraced false start (1), retraced false start (1), correction (1), and stutter (4). Meanwhile, the most frequent type of speech disfluency that appeared in Before All Others is repetition with a percentage 42.75%.

Speech disfluencies in bilingual Greek-English young adults

PurposeThe purpose of this study was to investigate the frequency and types of disfluencies in Greek-English bilingual adults across naturalistic speech samples and compare frequency and types of disfluencies between the participants’ L1 and L2. MethodsParticipants in the study included 26 Greek-English bilingual young adults. All participants were sequential bilinguals, whose first language was Greek and second language was English. Two speech samples were collected in each language, a conversational and a narrative sample, which were subsequently analyzed for the frequency and types of disfluencies. ResultsResults indicated that participants produced more typical disfluencies in English compared to Greek across speaking samples. The most frequent types of disfluencies were filled pauses and vowel prolongations (without tension or struggle) across speaking samples and languages. ConclusionOur results revealed differences in the types and frequencies of disfluencies produced in participants’ native compared to their second language. Results add to the growing body of literature addressing the manifestation of speech disfluencies in bilingual speakers.