Disfluency Types Research Articles

Use of Monolingual English Guidelines to Assess Stuttering in Bilingual Speakers:

Speech-language pathologists can identify stuttering in multiple languages,even if they do not speak the language. However, due to differences in languagedevelopment, multilingual speakers have been documented with higherlevels of typical disfluencies in their speech than monolingual speakers. Thesehigher levels of disfluency put multilingual speakers at greater risk of misdiagnosis as individuals who stutter, due to poor understanding of the nature of the manifestation of stuttering in two or more languages and reliance on monolingual-English diagnostic criteria. The purpose of the present systematic review is to explore how stuttering is identified in multilingual speakers who are described as participants who stutter, and whether monolingual English-speaking guidelines were the most commonly used reference for determining the presence of stuttering.

Disfluency Characteristics of 4- and 5-Year-Old Children Who Stutter and Their Relationship to Stuttering Persistence and Recovery.

Purpose The purpose of this study is to document disfluency behaviors expressed by 4- and 5-year-old children who stutter and to identify whether stuttering characteristics at this age are predictive of later stuttering recovery or persistence. Method We analyzed spontaneous speech samples from 47 children diagnosed with developmental stuttering when they were 4-5 years old. Based on their eventual diagnosis made the final year of participation in the longitudinal study when the children were 6-9 years old, the children were divided into two groups: children who eventually recovered from stuttering (n = 29) and children who were persisting (n = 18). We calculated a composite weighted stuttering-like disfluency (SLD) index of overall severity that considers the frequency, type, and number of repetition units of SLDs. The frequency and type of typical disfluencies were also examined. Results Higher weighted SLD scores at ages 4-5 years were associated with a higher probability of persistent stuttering. The weighted SLD also significantly discriminated between children who would eventually be diagnosed as persisting or recovered from stuttering. The frequency and type of typical disfluency did not distinguish the two groups of children; however, children who were persisting had significantly higher frequencies of part-word repetitions and dysrhythmic phonations (i.e., blocks, prolongations, and broken words) and maximum number of part-word repetitions compared to children who eventually recovered from stuttering. Conclusions Previous findings in younger, 2- to 3-year-old children who stutter did not suggest a relationship between the severity and type of children's SLDs and their eventual stuttering outcome. Yet, by the age of 4-5 years, we found that the weighted SLD, a clinically applicable tool, may be used to help identify children at greater risk for stuttering persistence. We propose that the weighted SLD be considered, along with other predictive factors, when assessing risk of stuttering persistence in 4- and 5-year-old children who are stuttering.

Recovery and Relapse: Perspectives From Adults Who Stutter.

Purpose Recovery and relapse relating to stuttering are often defined in terms of the presence or absence of certain types of speech disfluencies as observed by clinicians and researchers. However, it is well documented that the experience of the overall stuttering condition involves more than just the production of stuttered speech disfluencies. This study sought to identify what recovery and relapse mean to people who stutter based on their own unique experiences to account for both the stuttering behaviors and the broader adverse impact of the condition. Method In this study, 228 adults who stutter participated in a mixed-methods exploration of the terms "recovery" and "relapse." Participants categorized themselves on whether they considered themselves to have recovered or experienced relapse. Data were analyzed thematically through the lens of the speaker self-categorizations to determine how adults who stutter define recovery and relapse regarding stuttering. Results Results indicate that, to adults who stutter, recovery from stuttering is associated with increases in positive affective/emotional, behavioral, and cognitive reactions to the condition and simultaneous decreases in associated negative constructs. These group-level definitions did not change as a function of whether respondents reported that they had experienced recovery or relapse themselves. Discussion Recovery or relapse from stuttering behaviors can occur independently from recovery or relapse from the broader adverse impact related to the condition, suggesting that researchers and clinicians should consider recovery and relapse as involving more than just a reduction or an increase in observable behaviors. These findings support recent research evidence further specifying the many individual phenotypes of stuttering, in that pathways to recovery and relapse can be experienced in different ways for people with different stuttering phenotype profiles.

Classifying Disfluencies in Preschool- and School-Age Spanish–English Bilinguals Who Do Not Stutter: An Exploratory Study

Purpose This exploratory study examined the language skills and the type and frequency of disfluencies in the spoken narrative production of Spanish–English bilingual children who do not stutter. Method A cross-sectional sample of 29 bilingual students (16 boys and 13 girls) enrolled in grades prekindergarten through Grade 4 produced a total of 58 narrative retell language samples in English and Spanish. Key outcome measures in each language included the percentage of normal (%ND) and stuttering-like (%SLD) disfluencies, percentage of words in mazes (%MzWds), number of total words, number of different words, and mean length of utterance in words. Results Cross-linguistic, pairwise comparisons revealed significant differences with medium effect sizes for %ND and %MzWds (both lower for English) as well as for number of different words (lower for Spanish). On average, the total percentage of mazed words was higher than 10% in both languages, a pattern driven primarily by %ND; %SLDs were below 1% in both languages. Multiple linear regression models for %ND and %SLD in each language indicated that %MzWds was the primary predictor across languages beyond other language measures and demographic variables. Conclusions The findings extend the evidence base with regard to the frequency and type of disfluencies that can be expected in bilingual children who do not stutter in grades prekindergarten to Grade 4. The data indicate that %MzWds and %ND can similarly index the normal disfluencies of bilingual children during narrative production. The potential clinical implications of the findings from this study are discussed.

An Introductory Examination of Speech Disfluencies in Spanish–English Bilingual Children Who Do and Do Not Stutter During Narratives

Purpose The purpose of this study is to examine the frequency and type of speech disfluencies (stuttering-like and nonstuttering-like) in bilingual Spanish–English (SE) children who stutter (CWS) to SE children who do not stutter (CWNS) during narrative samples elicited in Spanish and English to provide further diagnostic information for this population and preliminary data toward an expansion of this study. Method Participants included six bilingual SE children (three CWS, three CWNS) ranging in age from 5 years to 7;5 (years;months) and recruited from the surrounding Houston, Texas area. Participants provided a narrative sample in English and Spanish. The frequency of speech disfluencies was tabulated, and mean length of utterance was measured for each sample. Results Results indicate that both talker groups exceed the diagnostic criteria typically used for developmental stuttering. Regardless of the language being spoken, CWS participants had a frequency of stuttering-like speech disfluencies that met or exceeded the diagnostic criteria for developmental stuttering that is based on monolingual English speakers. The CWNS participants varied in meeting the criteria depending on the language being spoken, with one of the three CWNS exceeding the criteria in both languages and one exceeding the criteria for percentage of stuttering-like speech disfluencies in one language. Conclusion Findings from this study contribute to the development of more appropriate diagnostic criteria for bilingual SE-speaking children to aid in the reduction of misdiagnoses of stuttering in this population.

Deep Learning Bidirectional LSTM based Detection of Prolongation and Repetition in Stuttered Speech using Weighted MFCC

Stuttering is a neuro-development disorder during which normal speech flow is not fluent. Traditionally Speech-Language Pathologists used to assess the extent of stuttering by counting the speech disfluencies manually. Such sorts of stuttering assessments are arbitrary, incoherent, lengthy, and error-prone. The present study focused on objective assessment to speech disfluencies such as prolongation and syllable, word, and phrase repetition. The proposed method is based on the Weighted Mel Frequency Cepstral Coefficient feature extraction algorithm and deep-learning Bidirectional Long-Short term Memory neural network for classification of stuttered events. The work has utilized the UCLASS stuttering dataset for analysis. The speech samples of the database are initially pre-processed, manually segmented, and labeled as a type of disfluency. The labeled speech samples are parameterized to Weighted MFCC feature vectors. Then extracted features are inputted to the Bidirectional-LSTM network for training and testing of the model. The effect of different hyper-parameters on classification results is examined. The test results show that the proposed method reaches the best accuracy of 96.67%, as compared to the LSTM model. The promising recognition accuracy of 97.33%, 98.67%, 97.5%, 97.19%, and 97.67% was achieved for the detection of fluent, prolongation, syllable, word, and phrase repetition, respectively.

Clinical Success Using the Audio-Visual Feedback Training for Cluttering

Purpose Among the best strategies to address inadequate speech monitoring skills and other parameters of communication in people with cluttering (PWC) is the relatively new but very promising auditory–visual feedback (AVF) training ( van Zaalen & Reichel, 2015 ). This study examines the effects of AVF training on articulatory accuracy, pause duration, frequency, and type of disfluencies of PWC, as well as on the emotional and cognitive aspects that may be present in clients with this communication disorder ( Reichel, 2010 ; van Zaalen & Reichel, 2015 ). Methods In this study, 12 male adolescents and adults—6 with phonological and 6 with syntactic cluttering—were provided with weekly AVF training for 12 weeks, with a 3-month follow-up. Data was gathered on baseline (T0), Week 6 (T1), Week 12 (T2), and after follow-up (T3). Spontaneous speech was recorded and analyzed by using digital audio-recording and speech analysis software known as Praat ( Boersma & Weenink, 2017 ). Results The results of this study indicated that PWC demonstrated significant improvements in articulatory rate measurements and in pause duration following the AVF training. In addition, the PWC in the study reported positive effects on their ability to retell a story and to speak in more complete sentences. PWC felt better about formulating their ideas and were more satisfied with their interactions with people around them. Conclusions The AVF training was found to be an effective approach for improving monitoring skills of PWC with both quantitative and qualitative benefits in the behavioral, cognitive, emotional, and social domains of communication.

Speech disfluencies in bilingual Yiddish-Dutch speaking children

ABSTRACTIn this study, we investigated the frequency and types of stuttering-like (SLD) and other (OD) disfluencies in 59 typically developing bilingual Yiddish-Dutch (YD) speaking children. Participants were divided in two age categories: 6.01–7.07 and 9.00–10.04-year-olds. All children (1) were successive, bilingual YD speaking, (2) had Yiddish as their dominant language and (3) were sufficiently intelligible in both languages. A conversation sample of at least 300 syllables was collected in each of the two languages. The main findings in this study were (a) the total amount of SLD as well as OD were significantly higher in the non-dominant language. For the SLD, this was mainly caused by the higher frequency of monosyllabic word and syllable repetitions. For the OD, almost all disfluency types seem to have contributed to this. (b) The total amount of OD was significantly higher in the older group of bilingual YD children than in the younger group. This was primarily due to higher frequencies of phrase repetitions, lexical revisions and unfinished words. (c) The monolingual diagnostic guideline of three SLD per 100 words as a means to label stuttering cannot be used in this bilingual population. The majority of the non-stuttering children scored higher than the standard 3% SLD in both languages. In the dominant Yiddish language, 27 children (46%) scored above this percentage, in the non-dominant Dutch language, 46 children (78%).We conclude that bilingual YD-speaking children have a higher frequency of speech disfluencies in comparison to monolingual children. Consequently, monolingual stuttering guidelines cannot be used in this bilingual population.

A two-case study of coarticulation in stuttered speech. An articulatory approach

ABSTRACTThis study aims to describe the coarticulatory behaviour in stuttered speech from an articulatory point of view. Its purpose is to assess the nature of transitions between a stuttered phone and preceding and subsequent phones. Two persons who stutter were recorded by means of an electromagnetic articulograph while reading a text. The vertical movements of upper and lower lips, tongue body, tongue tip and mandible were extracted. They were then analysed during a stuttering moment and linked to the acoustic type of disfluency. Our findings showed several configurations of coarticulatory behaviour in terms of supraglottic articulatory movements. While disfluencies can be the result of a disrupted coarticulatory configuration, no systematicity has been found. Moreover, all acoustic types of disfluencies are represented in several coarticulatory configurations. Therefore, a stuttering-like disfluency is not always due to a coarticulatory disturbance, since correct coarticulatory patterns can be observed both between the disfluent sound and its previous and subsequent sounds. Furthermore, they suggest that the acoustic classification of disfluencies does not seem important for the coarticulatory behaviour.

Disfluency in relay and non-relay simultaneous interpreting

Abstract This corpus-based study explores the effects of relay interpreting at meetings of the United Nations General Assembly by comparing features of disfluency between the outputs of relay and non-relay simultaneous interpreting (SI). The findings are as follows: (1) the output of relay interpreting is shorter and more dispersive than that of non-relay interpreting; (2) filled pauses are the most common type of disfluency; and (3) the relay SI output shows fewer lexical and phonetic E-repairs and more A-repairs for ambiguity, syntactic E-repairs, and D-repairs than the non-relay output. The results suggest that the use of relay vs. non-relay interpreting may affect interpreters’ output.

Speech Fluency in Acquired Apraxia of Speech During Narrative Discourse: Group Comparisons and Dual-Task Effects.

Purpose Slowed speech and interruptions to the flow of connected speech are common in aphasia. These features are also observed during dual-task performance for neurotypical adults. The purposes of this study were to determine (a) whether indices of fluency related to cognitive-linguistic versus motor processing would differ between speakers with aphasia plus apraxia of speech (AOS) and speakers with aphasia only and (b) whether cognitive load reduces fluency in speakers with aphasia with and without AOS. Method Fourteen speakers with aphasia (7 with AOS) and 7 neurotypical controls retold short stories alone (single task) and while simultaneously distinguishing between a high and a low tone (dual task). Their narrative samples were analyzed for speech fluency according to sample duration, speech rate, pause/fill time, and repetitions per syllable. Results As expected, both speaker groups with aphasia spoke slower and with more pauses than the neurotypical controls. The speakers with AOS produced more repetitions and longer samples than controls, but they did not differ on these measures from the speakers with aphasia without AOS. Relative to the single-task condition, the dual-task condition increased the duration of pauses and fillers for all groups but reduced speaking rate only for the control group. Sample duration and frequency of repetitions did not change in response to cognitive load. Conclusions Speech output in aphasia becomes less fluent when speakers have to engage in simultaneous tasks, as is typical in everyday conversation. Although AOS may lead to more sound and syllable repetitions than normal, speaking tasks other than narrative discourse might better capture this specific type of disfluency. Future research is needed to confirm and expand these preliminary findings. Supplemental Material https://doi.org/10.23641/asha.8847845.

INVESTIGATION OF SPEECH DISFLUENCIES CLASSIFICATION ON DIFFERENT THRESHOLD SELECTION TECHNIQUES USING ENERGY FEATURE EXTRACTION

Filled pause and Elongation are the two types of speech disfluencies that need more suitable acoustical features to be classified correctly since they are always being misclassified. This work concentrates on developing an accurate and robust energy feature extraction for modelling filled pause and elongation by investigating different energy features using local maxima points of the speech energy. Method: In this paper, we extracted peak values from each frame of a voiced signal by implementing different thresholding techniques to classify filled pause and elongation. These energy features are evaluated by using statistical naïve Bayes classifier to see the contribution on the classification processes. Various samples of sustained syllables and filled pauses of spontaneous speech were extracted from Malaysian Parliamentary Debate Database of the year 2008. A naïve Bayes was used as a classifier. We performed F-measure evaluation to investigate the significant differences in mean of filled pause and elongation samples. Results: Results revealed that our proposed LM-E has increase the classification with up to 71% and 75% F-measure for elongation and filled pause. Conclusion: The best achieved accuracies in both filled pause and elongation classification were varied depending on the types of thresholding techniques applied during the local maxima of speech energy extraction. The most contributed thresholding technique is our proposed technique which is by using the adaptive height as the threshold that extracts the local maxima of the speech energy (LM-E).

Processing of self-repairs in stuttered and non-stuttered speech

ABSTRACTPrevious research suggests that listeners can use the presence of speech disfluencies to predict upcoming linguistic input. But how is the processing of typical disfluencies affected when the speaker also produces atypical disfluencies, as in the case of stuttering? We addressed this question in a visual-world eye-tracking experiment in which participants heard self-repair disfluencies while viewing displays that contained a predictable target entity. Half the participants heard the sentences spoken by a speaker who stuttered, and half heard the sentences spoken by the same speaker who produced the sentences without stuttering. Results replicated previous work in demonstrating that listeners engage in robust predictive processing when hearing self-repair disfluencies. Crucially, the magnitude of the prediction effect was reduced when the speaker stuttered compared to when the speaker did not stutter. Overall, the results suggest that listeners’ ability to model the production system of a speaker is disrupted when the speaker stutters.

Pause behavior within reformulations and the proficiency level of second language learners of English

AbstractThis research reports on a quantitative analysis of the combination of two types of disfluency, reformulations and pauses, in the speech of lower intermediate and advanced speakers of English as a second language (L2). The present study distinguishes between corrections and false starts within the category of reformulations as well as between silent and filled pauses. It focuses on the extent to which pause behavior within reformulations varies according to the stage of L2 development and the type of reformulation used. An analysis was made of 56 L2 speakers’ 2-min monologues. The results showed that lower intermediate and advanced speakers differed on the frequency of silent pauses inserted in corrections but not on their frequency in false starts. This suggests that false starts depend less on proficiency level, and may reflect temporary problems with conceptual encoding or extralinguistic factors that contribute to the efficacy of L2 production rather than difficulties with linguistic processing per se. The frequency of silent pauses rather than silent pause duration or the frequency and duration of filled pauses appeared to be the only marker to differentiate between false starts and corrections across the two proficiency groups.

Eliciting Naturalistic Conversations: A Method for Assessing Communication Ability, Subjective Experience, and the Impacts of Noise and Hearing Impairment.

Purpose The purpose of this study was to introduce a method of eliciting conversational behavior with many aspects of realism, which may be used to study the impacts of hearing impairment and noise on verbal communication; to describe the characteristics of speech and language participants produced during the task; and to assess participants' engagement and motivation while completing the task. Method Twenty young adults with normal hearing and 20 older adults with hearing impairment took part in face-to-face conversations while completing a referential communication puzzle task designed to elicit natural conversational speech production and language with a number of realistic characteristics. Participants rated the difficulty and relevance of acoustic scenes for communication and their engagement in conversations. Results The communication task elicited speech production in a natural conversational register and language with many realistic characteristics, including complex linguistic constructions and typical disfluencies found in everyday speech, and approximately balanced contributions within dyads. Subjective ratings suggest that the task is robust to learning and fatigue effects and that participants remained highly engaged throughout the experiment. All participants were able to maintain successful communication regardless of background noise level and degree of hearing impairment. Conclusions The communication task described here may be used as part of a functional assessment of the ability to communicate in the presence of noise and hearing impairment. Although existing speech assessments have many strengths, they do not take into account the inherently interactive nature of spoken communication or the effects of motivation and engagement.

SENYAPAN DAN KILIR LIDAH BERDAMPINGAN DALAM PRODUKSI UJARAN

This study examines sequencial hesitation disfluencies and slip of the tongue in Bahasa Indonesia from psycholinguistic reviews. The aim is to find (1) the type of sequencial hesitation disfluencies and slip of the tongue and (2) the relation between hesitation disfluencies and slip of the tongue in a speech production. The data in this study were taken from spontaneous speeches in the speech titles Mata Najwa and Kick Andy with the reading method and then analyzed with a slime technique. This study produced two findings. First , the type of sequencial hesitation disfluencies and slip of the tongue, namely (a) Freudians Slip- Filled Pauses, (b) Freudian Slip-Silence Combinations, (c) Blend-Filled Pauses, (d) Anticipation — Filled Pauses, (e) Transposition Filled Pauses, and (f) Transposition-Silence Combinations. Second , Hesitation Disfluencies arises as a result of slip of the tongue because speakers need additional time to retrieve the required vocabulary.

Tavallista sujumattomuutta: Aikuisten puheen sujuvuuden kvantitatiivinen analyysi

Tutkimus käsittelee suomenkielisten aikuisten puheen tyypillisiä sujumattomuuksia ja niiden normaalivariaatiota. Henkilöt (N = 70) olivat neurologisesti terveitä, eikä heillä ollut diagnosoituja puheen tai kielen häiriöitä. Heidän sarjakuvakerrontaan perustuvien audioaineistojen transkriptioista analysoitiin puhenopeuden ja artikulaationopeuden lisäksi 10 puheen sujuvuutta kuvaavaa muuttujaa. Tutkimuksessa tarkasteltiin muuttujien yleisyyttä, niiden keskinäisiä suhteita sekä sujumattomuuksien vaikutusta sujumattomuusprosenttiin. Sujumattomuusprosentin keskiarvo oli koko aineistossa 2,3 % (vv = 0,0–7,8 %), ja sitä selittivät vahvimmin muuttujat korjaus ja sanan toisto sekä epäröinti, joka oli myös yleisin sujumattomuustyyppi. Sujumattomuusprosentin mukaan jaetuissa puhujaryhmissä sujumattomuuden tyyppi muuttui sujumattomuusprosentin kasvaessa. Sujumattomuuksista muodostui neljä faktoria: sujumattomuudet, jotka liittyivät 1) kielelliseen muotoiluun, 2) viestin suunnitteluun, 3) viestin jatkuvuuden ylläpitoon ja 4) artikulaatioon. Sujumattomuusprosenttia selittivät parhaiten sujumattomuudet, jotka liittyivät kielelliseen muotoiluun sekä ilmaisun jatkuvuuden ylläpitoon. Tulokset vahvistivat ajatusta puheen sujuvuudesta jatkumona sekä toivat esiin sujumattomuuksien laajan variaation niin määrällisesti kuin laadullisestikin. Tämän aineiston normaalivariaatiota voidaan käyttää sekä häiriödiagnostiikan että kuntoutustavoitteiden asettamisen tukena. Lisäksi tutkimuksen tulokset toimivat vertailupohjana tuleville tutkimuksille.

Fear emotion classification in speech by acoustic and behavioral cues

Machine-based emotional speech classification has become a requirement for natural and familiar human-computer interactions. Because emotional speech recognition systems use a person’s voice to spontaneously detect their emotional status and take subsequent appropriate actions, they can be used widely for various reason in call centers and emotional based media services. Emotional speech recognition systems are primarily developed using emotional acoustic data. While there are several emotional acoustic databases available for emotion recognition systems in other countries, there is currently no real situational data related to the “fear emotion” available. Thus, in this study, we collected acoustic data recordings which represent real urgent and fearful situations from an emergency call center. To classify callers’ emotions more accurately, we also included the additional behavioral feature “interjection” which can be classified as a type of disfluency which arises due to cognitive dysfunction observed in spontaneous speech when a speaker gets hyperemotional. We used Support Vector Machines (SVM), with the interjections feature, as well as conventionally used acoustic features (i.e., F0 variability, voice intensity variability, and Mel-Frequency Cepstral Coefficients; MFCCs) to identify which emotional category acoustic data fell into. The results of our study revealed that the MFCC was the best acoustic feature for spontaneous fear speech classification. In addition, we demonstrated the validity of behavioral features as an important criteria for emotional classification improvement.

Towards the phonetic basis of spoken second language assessment: temporal features as indicators of perceived proficiency level


 
 
 This study investigates whether temporal features in speech can predict the perceived proficiency level in Finnish learners of Swedish. In so doing, seven expert raters assessed speech samples produced by upper secondary school students using the revised CEFR scale for phonological control. The effect of temporal features was studied with a cumulative link mixed model, and the assessments were further analyzed to study inter-rater variation. The results indicate that articulation rate and certain types of disfluencies in speech can predict the perceived proficiency level. Furthermore, assessors seem to weigh temporal features differently depending on the speech type and their individual focus.
 
 

Individual differences in the production of disfluency: A latent variable analysis of memory ability and verbal intelligence.

Recent work has begun to focus on the role that individual differences in executive function and intelligence have on the production of fluent speech. However, isolating the underlying causes of different types of disfluency has been difficult given the speed and complexity of language production. In this study, we focused on the role of memory abilities and verbal intelligence, and we chose a task that relied heavily on memory for successful performance. Given the task demands, we hypothesised that a substantial proportion of disfluencies would be due to memory retrieval problems. We contrasted memory abilities with individual differences in verbal intelligence as previous work highlighted verbal intelligence as an important factor in disfluency production. A total of 78 participants memorised and repeated 40 syntactically complex sentences, which were recorded and coded for disfluencies. Model comparisons were carried out using hierarchical structural equation modelling. Results showed that repetitions were significantly related to verbal intelligence. Unfilled pauses and repairs, in contrast, were marginally ( p < .09) related to memory abilities. The relationship in all cases was negative. Conclusions explore the link between different types of disfluency and particular problems arising in the course of production, and how individual differences inform theoretical debates in language production.