Revisiting speech rate and utterance length ... - ResearchGate

M. Blomgren, A.M. Goberman / Journal of Communication Disorders 41 (2008) 159–178 165presentation order effects, the order of presentation of the four tasks was randomizedfor each participant. Specific information on the four experimental speaking tasksfollows.2.2.2.1. Length of utterance.a. Monosyllabic words. Forty-five monosyllabic consonant + vowel + consonant (CVC)words were presented via index cards to each participant to be read aloud. Thespecific CVC words were chosen to represent various word initial phonemevariations in voicing, place, and manner of articulation. Johnson and Brown (1935)have noted that for most individuals who stutter, the likelihood they will stutter on agiven word is strongly influenced by the word-initial phoneme. However, the specificphonemes that may lead to difficulty vary markedly from one individual who stuttersto another (Quarrington, Conway, & Siegel, 1962; Wells, 1983), so a broadrepresentation of word-initial phonemes was sampled. There is also evidence thatstuttering occurs more often on content words (nouns, verbs, adjectives, andadverbs) compared to function words (e.g. articles, prepositions, pronouns; Brown,1937; Eisenson & Horowitz, 1945; Quarrington et al., 1962; Wingate, 1979),therefore a majority of the words presented were content words. The words are listedin Appendix A.b. Short phrases. Each participant read aloud 45 three-word phrases presented via indexcards. Each word in each of the phrases was monosyllabic; therefore, all phrasescontained three syllables. In an attempt to partially balance the lexical content betweenthe word and phrase conditions, each phrase contained one of the 45 CVC words fromthe word task. The phrases are also listed in Appendix A.2.2.2.2. Speech rate stability.a. Stable (habitual) speech rate. During the stable rate speech tasks, participants wererequired to read all of the words and phrases at a steady, self-determined habitualspeaking rate.b. Unstable (variable) speech rate. During the unstable speech rate tasks, participants readthe same words and phrases as during the stable speech rate tasks. For this task, eachtoken was read using variable speech rates, which randomly alternated between slow,habitual, and fast. Fifteen of the 45 words were produced at a fast rate, 15 at a normal(habitual) rate, and 15 at a slow rate. Rate cues (‘‘fast,’’ ‘‘normal,’’ or ‘‘slow’’) wereprinted on the lower left corner of each card.Before performing the experimental speaking tasks, each participant viewed a videotapecontaining demonstrations of the tasks. The videotape displayed an adult male speakerproducing five words and five phrases at slow, habitual, and fast rates. Thedemonstration words and phrases were different from those used in the study. Slowrate of speech was produced at a rate of approximately one syllable/s. Habitual rate wasmodeled at approximately two syllables/s, and fast rate was modeled at approximatelyfour syllables/s. This videotape was presented as an example of the tasks, and