Fluency
INTRODUCTION
The
term fluency is taken from the Latin word ‘fluere’ for flowing, describes what
the listener perceives when listening to someone who is truly adept at
producing speech. The speech flows easily and smoothly in terms of both sound
and information. There is no disruption of the stream, and the listener can
attend to the message (the overall effect of the performance) ratherthan
considering how it was produced.Normal speech fluency refers to the production
of speech at the normal level of skills that is, continuity of speech, rate of
speech, effortless speech which is rhythmic in nature.Fluent speech is the
consistent ability of an individual to not only move his speech production
apparatus in an effortless, smooth and rapid manner resulting in a continuous,
uninterrupted forward flow of speech but also smooth uninterrupted flow of
language
DEFINITION
Fluency
in a layman term refers to general proficiency may be in the act of reading,
writing and speaking.
When
it comes to speech communication it can be termed as effortless, rapid flow of
utterances.
In
terms of non-native language skill or II language learned skill. It can be
defined as an effortless, continuous speech at a rapid rate of utterance whether
it refers to I language or II language
“Fluency” refers to the effortless production
of long continuous utterances at a rapid rate; be it the first language or
second language(Starkweather, 1980).
Fluency according to the ordinary usage is the
“ability to speak a second language rapidly and continuously and without any
particular effort or thought.”
According
to Starkweather,1986 fluency can be defined as the effortless production of
long continuous utterances at a rapid rate, be it the first language or second
language.
According
to Adams(1982) to be fluent, a person has to adjust respiratory, phonatory, and
articulatory system so as to:
Start
airflow upward and out of lungs.
Create
a source of resistance at the vocal folds level.
Bring
a subglottic air pressure to open up the vocal folds and allow periodic
vibration for voicing
Complete articulatory
movement which is the final part for the meaningful utterance.
The
critical importance involves co- ordination of these four adjustments so that
it occurs in a smooth manner.
TYPES
OF FLUENCY
1) Language
fluency
2) Speech
fluency
Language
fluency
There
are four types of language fluency which are described by Filmore(1979) and
interpreted by Starkweather(1987).
a) Syntactic
fluency: speakers who are syntactically fluent are able to construct highly
complex sentences.
b) Semantic
fluency: speakers who are semantically fluent possess and are able to access
large vocabularies.
c) Pragmatic
fluency: speakers who are pragmatically fluent are adept at verbal response in
a variety of speaking situations.
d) Phonologic
fluency: speakers who are able to pronounce long and complicated sequences of
sounds and syllables, including nonsense and foreign words.
Speech
fluency
Starkweather
(1987) defines speech fluency in terms of continuity, rate, duration, and
effort.
Dimensions of fluency:
In order to appreciate the nature of nonfluent speech
production, it is necessary to understand the dimensions of fluent speech.
Starkweather (1987) considered fluency as a multidimensional behavior. And the
dimensions of fluency suggested are:
1. The continuity
or smoothness of speech
2. The rate of
speech
3. The effort a
speaker makes in producing speech and
4. Rhythmic
structure (Starkweather, 1982)
Starkweather
suggested that all these 4 elements of fluency are related to each other.
CONTINUITY
It
relates to the degree to which syllables and words are logically sequenced as
well as the presence or absence of pauses. If the semantic unit follows one
another in a continual flow of information, the speech is interpreted as
fluent. If the units of speech fail to flow in a logical sequence, information
does not flow.
Another
aspect of continuity has to do with a disruption in the flow of sound in the
form of pauses. Clark (1971) differentiated pauses as conventional and
idiosyncratic. Conventional pauses are used by speakers to signal a
linguistically important event. Idiosyncratic pauses, on the other hand reflect
hesitation or uncertainty on the part of speaker. These pauses indicate a
decision making process concerning upcoming word choice, style or syntax.
Pauses
also have been considered as filled or unfilled. Unfilled pauses are
characterised by a silence lasting longer than approximately 250 ms(Goldman-
Eisler,1958).filled pauses are characterised by meaningless sounds such as ‘ah’
‘er’ and ’um’ .with filled pauses, the flow of sound continues, but again,
the information does not.
Stark
whether stated that this pauses or hesitation may occur for a variety of
reasons:
a) As
a planned or practiced pauses to create a dramatic effect.
b) As
a method to allow time to formulate the cognitive or linguistic content and
sequence of the next utterances.
c) As
a method of preplanning the neuromotor production sequence of speech sounds
d) As
an avoidance to delay the onset of utterances where problems in production,
content acceptability, or auditory reaction are anticipated.
CONTINUITY-
FINDING
1) Unfilled
pauses occur on the average every 4.8 words when speakers were providing
narrative descriptions
and every 7.5 words when they were engaged in discussion
(Goldman-Eisler,1968).in both of these cases the speech was perceived by
listeners to be ‘continuous’.
2) Pauses
are distributed in a predictable way throughout utterance. They are more likely
to occur before content words such as nouns, verbs, adverbs and adjectives than
before function words such as preposition, article and conjunction (Mc Clay and
Osgood, 1959).
3) Filled
pauses tend to occur before longer and more complex sentences (Cook Smith and
Lalljee, 1974).
4) Filled
pauses are more common at the beginning of clauses than within
clauses(Boomer,1965)Cook,1971;Hawkins,1971)
5) Adults
pause more often when explaining than when describing(Goldman-Eisler,1968)
6) When
people read out loud, they pause less often, their pauses are synchronized with
their breathing, and the pauses occur at major syntactic boundaries when the
same people speak spontaneously, they pause more often, and some of the pauses
are located intra causally and not synchronized with breathing
(Henderson,GoldmanEistoc and skarbek,1965).
7) There
is a significant difference between the sexes in utterances length. Women
tending to be more fluent than men in this way (Malccot,Johnston and Kizziar,1972).
RATE
OF SPEECH
Rate
of speech also signals the perception of fluency. Most people talk about as
fast as they can, as indicated by Tiffaney(1980) who noted that the maximum and
ordinary rate of speech tend to be similar. According to speaking task there is
variability in rate in terms of such factors as formality of the speaking
situation, time pressure and interference from noise or competing messages.
These appear to be a reasonably wide range of acceptable rates in the judgement
of fluency. It is well known that if communication failure is likely, such as
when speaking in a noisy environment, speakers are likely to slow down(Long
Hurst and Siegel,1973). Likewise if a speaker is producing a lengthy utterance,
the rate of speech is likely to be more rapid (Malecot,Johnson and
Kizzear,1972).
Rate
is typically measured in terms of words or syllables per minute. Stark weather
notes that as children mature, their syllable rate increases while rate
variability decreases.
He
suggests that pauses may help us in achieving faster intra phrase rate by
creating brief planning intervals to prepare for rapid motor execution on the
subsequent sequence. He questions a tendency to regard all (most pauses) as
disfluencies. Stark weather refers to Kowal,o’Connoll and Sabin,1975) who
reported that by the second grade, unfilled pause duration decreased by about
60%, while the pauses duration reduction from 2ndthrough 12th grade
is only about 25%
Caution
is necessary because we do not know to what degree pause duration represents
language planning, motor-sequencing plans, other factors or combination.
RATE
OF SPEECH –FINDINGS:
1) Adult
speakers of English speak at an average rate of 5-6 syllables/sec(Walker and
Black,1950)
2) Rate
are only slightly different in other languages(Malecot,Johnston and
Kizziar,1972:osser and Peng,1964)
3) The
rate at which continuous syllables can be produced is a function of
a) Speed
of articulatory movement
b) The
degree of coarticulatory overlap(Gay,1978:Stark weather,1981)
4) Speech
can be compressed up to 275 wpm mechanically with little loss of comprehension,
but comprehension declines rapidly at higher speed(Foulke,1971)
5) Length
of utterance is correlated with the rate of speech, rate being faster in longer
utterances (Malecot,Johnston and Kizziar,1972).
EFFORT
It
refers to the ease with which an act is performed. Stark weather (1987)
distinguishes two types of effort:
a) Effort
associated with linguistic planning(mental)
b) Effort
associated with the muscle movement(physical)
Effort
can also be neuromuscular in the timing and coordination of respiration,
phonation and articulation using the formula of 14 phonemes per second
multiplied by 100 muscles involved per sound production, multiplied by 100
motor units per muscle ( Darley, Aronson and Brown,1975)
Effort
can also be mental in terms of formulating the content of a response and
rearranging content in an appropriate syntactic sequence.
Stark
weather stated that pauses can be related to fluency as follows:
1) If
pauses are prolonged unduly, but production meets the criteria, there is a
planning disfluency.
2) If
pauses are appropriate in place and duration but the production erroneous- there
is execution disfluency.
3) If
pauses are inappropriate or prolonged duly, and production also is in error-
there is combined planning and execution disfluency.
Stark weather relates
the effort to continuity, rate, rhythm and stress. He notes that gesture may
possibly reduce effort. On the idea that ‘entrained’ movements reflex the
stress characteristics of the primary movement sequence or utterance. He refers
to research where finger tapping in time with syllable production disclosed a
more forceful finger tap when an uttered syllable was
stressed.(Kelso,Tuller,Harris,1983).
It is possible that
fluency disorders typically are reflections of abnormal effort in
planning/execution. This abnormal effort may be in the form of thinking time or
it may be in the form of too much muscular effort. Because there is a level of
effort which may be duration judged abnormal, we need to learn what constitutes
a normal amount of effort so that the clinical judgement of abnormal can have a
point of reference.
Effort-finding:
1) Alpha
wave activity in locations of the brain known to be associated with speech
diminishes just before a person speaks (Linebaugh, 1975).
2) Stops
and fricatives require more effort than nasals and glides, as measured by intra
oral air pressure (Malecot,1955).
3) Voiced
sounds have lower intra oral air pressure than unvoiced sounds (Subtelnyet
al.1966).
4) Males
have lower intra oral air pressure peaks than females (Subtelny et al,1966)
because of the longer male vocal tract.
5) Children
have higher pressure peaks than adults (Subtelny et al,1966).
6) Intra
oral air pressure decreases as the rate of speech increases (Arkebaner,1964).
7) The
contact force between opposing articulators is increased during greater speech
effort (Laper and natoll,1969).
DURATION
Duration
of speech segments relates closely to the co articulation of the segments. The
duration of the consonants and vowels of a language varies considerably with
speech rate and phonetic and linguistic context. For example, stressed
syllables are longer than unstressed ones9Umeda, 1975). Sound segments are
longer at the initiation and termination of syllables, words and phrases
(Fowler, 1978). Segment duration are dramatically influenced by position
in the syllable(initial consonants are longer than syllable-final consonants),
length of the word and length of the sentence(Huggins,1978).much of what occurs
in terms of the duration of individual sound segments and words appear to be
related to the speaker’s anticipated flow of information during an utterance(
Stark weather,1978).that is, the speaker may not need to plan all aspects of
the upcoming utterances in terms of the necessary respiratory ,phonatory and
articulatory events. Rather the speaker would only need to have some idea about
the amount of information the utterance would contain.
Fluent
speech is characterised by little sensation of opposition or constriction of
airflow. The air, the movements and the sounds are produced with evident ease
and smoothness .On the other hand; people who stutter are at the opposite end
of the continuum of effort.
THE
DURATION OF SPEECH SEGMENTS-FINDINGS:
1) The
duration of consonants and vowels varies according to their inherent duration,
their position in the utterance, their position in the word, the immediately
adjacent sounds, the length of and the word’s frequency of usage (Umeda, 1975).
2) The
duration of sounds reflects a continual speeding up and down of speech rate
(Stark weather,1981) and these alterations seem to give the listener an
additional cue about the syntactic structure of the utterance(Van
Lancker,canter and Terbeek,1981).
3) Segments
are lengthened at the beginning and endings of each syllable, words and
phrases.(Fowler,1977).
4) All
segments in a stressed syllables are lengthened, consonants and vowels
alike(Huggin,1978).
5) Segment
durations are affected by position in the syllable (a syllable initial
consonant-/s/ in my seat is 10-20% longer than a syllable final consonant-/s/
in ‘mice eat’ (Huggins,1978).
6) Segment
duration are affected by length of a sentence; the longer the sentence, the
shorter each word in it-compare ‘joe’ in ‘joe called’ to ‘Joe’ in ‘Joe took
father’s bench out’(Huggins,1978).
7) Speech
rate is not linearly related to segment duration when a sentence spoken twice
as fast, some segments are shortened more than others specifically the vowels
are shortened more than others, specifically the vowels are shortened more than
the consonants (Huggins,1978).
RHYTHM
Theory: rather than
being a dimension of fluency,’R’ seems to promote or
enhance fluency. Specifically, it seems that speech rhythm
serves fluency by making it easier for us to talk faster.It does this in
several ways.
Unstressed syllables
are shorter and thus require less time. In addition rhythm assist in rapid
speech production by providing means for us to anticipate upcoming movements
there is a certain rhythm to speech. Rhythm as an aspect or rate and continuity
is determined by the pattern of stress and unstressed in syllable production.
Stress points in utterance tend to follow predictable pattern based on ‘law and
custom’ of a particular language. Listener’s intuitive judgements of stress
have been found to be related adequately to objective measures of stress
(Wingate,1984).rate changes relate to stress points in that we tend to slow
syllable rate prior to a stress point and then increase syllable rate following
it.it is possible that the pre-stress rate reduction is an example of intra
phrase planning activity. Most of our extra additions in the form of gestures
,loudness ,pitch variations, and so on, tend to occur at or around stress
points in utterances.
FINDINGS:
1) Segmental
rhythm reflects word boundaries-compare ‘great rain’ and
‘graytrain,’(Allen1968) uses the word rhythm to refer to segmental
variations.
2) In
speeded speech, syllables are further unstressed (Gay, 1978).
3) Speech
produced in time to a regular rhythm ,like a metronome, contains fewer
disfluencies(Silverman,1971) and is subjectively easier to produce
ROLE
OF RHYTHM IN PROMOTING FLUENCY
Allen(1968) theorizes
that rhythm is imposed on speech for the same reason that any movement might be
organised temporarily, to facilitate execution. Like counting the beats of a
measure, while learning a new dance step, the rhythm of speech makes it easier
for speakers to perform speech movements at the appropriate time and to
coordinate them, with other movements involved in the same production. Allen
offers very little evidence for this idea, although it has strong intuitive
appeal. It might be noted, however, that speech rhythm is made more regular, as
it is when speaking in time to a metronome or singing, there is a tendency to
speak with fewer discontinuities.
Allen (1968) refers to
’the fact that rhythm conveysvary little information during speech’. Martin
(1972) however says that’ rhythmic patterning carries a heavy information load
in ordinary connected speech’.
Martin’s idea(1972) is
that the rhythm of language is a kind of temporal structure, a convention held
jointly by speakers of the language. Because the’R’ is conventionally held, the
listener is able to anticipate the rhythm of words that the speaker has not got
uttered. This prepares the listener in a number of ways.it reduces the
uncertainty of when specific speech events, for example stressed syllables, are
going to occur. This might facilitate the focus of attention on
information-bearing elements, such as content words (Lieberman, 1963).
It is interesting that
Allen’s theory of speech rhythm explains how rhythm helps the speaker produce
speech more quickly, while Martin’s explains how rhythm enables the listener to
decode speech more accurately.
These two theories are
consequently not only compatible, but they are complementary also. Several
preliminary studies (Stark weather/1983) indicate the speakers are able to
follow rhythms, using them to anticipate and produce temporally accurate speech
movements, as the tempos of the rhythm increase and decrease.
DEVELOPMENT
OF FLUENCY
The findings related
to fluency development make it clear that children’s speech becomes increasing
fluent as they mature. When children first begin to produce speech to convey
idea, it is produced slowly, and many of the features of the rhythm are
missing.as their fluency increases, children also learn to deal with lapses of
fluency in more sophisticated ways.
Demands
and capacities model of fluency development
Growth in the capacity for fluent speech
comes from several areas. There is increasing control over the movements of the
vocal tract.
Another capacity for fluency comes from
rhythm. The sense of rhythm makes it easier for a child to anticipate movements
of speech production, and as a result it will give him a motoric confidence for
fluency.
Increased syntactic, semantic,
phonologic and pragmatic knowledge all contribute to this demand for fluency.
The people with whom children communicate-also place demands on them. According
to Stark weather, the increasing fluency is accompanied by an increasing demand
for fluency from the environment, or even from within the child.
Development-speech
continuity
Findings
1) From
29 months to 33 months to 37 months, discontinuities decline from 6.5 % to
5.10%, to 4.10 %(Yairi,1981).
2) Discontinuities
decline from 14.6% to 9.1% from ages 2-4 but then remain the same from 4-6
years ( wexler and Mysak,1982).
3) From
3 ½ -5 years, discontinuities decline from 11.9-9.5%( Dejoy and Gregory,1975)
Kindergarten and first grade children’s
speech is approximately 2% and more discontinuous than that of high school
children (Kowal,O’Connell and Sabin,1975).
4) Two
types dominate the discontinuities of 2 years old.
A) Repetition
of small units(parts of words etc)
B) Interjections
and revision(Yairi,1981)
Development
of rate
The
rate at which speech is produced is an important aspect
of fluency and it shows clear
developmental trends. These trends are evident in several different
measures-pause duration, length of utterance, syllable/sec and segment
duration.
Pause
duration:
Several
of Kowal, O’connel and Sabin’s observations suggest
that the duration of unfilled pauses is an
excellent measure of fluency development.
1) It
directly influences the rate of speech
2) It
shows strong developmental trends that parallel another fluency measure of
known clinical importance
3) It
shows a clinically important difference between the sexes- unfilled pauses
duration presents one difficulty as a measure of speech fluency-it is not
independent of language fluency. Children with abnormal long unfilled pauses
may be using the extra time to plan language, not speech.
Speech has many levels
of organisation- words are nested within utterances, syllables within words,
sounds within syllables and individual gesture within sounds. The rate of
speech is seen a little different at each of these levels of organization.
The most complex level
is the utterance, and the length of an utterance related to the rate at which
it is produced. This relation seems to be determined by the amount of sound
produced. This relation seems to be determined by the amount of information the
utterance contains. Although a longer utterance typically contains more
information than a short one, the amount of information in each word of a
longer utterance is less than that in a shorter utterance because of the
additional redundancy of the context. One can supply the missing item more
readily in a longer utterance because of the additional context.
The rate can be
assessed in word and syllable levels also.
Smith (1978) compared
the duration of 9 words in the speech of 2 and 4 year old children with that of
adults. The duration of words was a direct function of the subject’s age.
The results
Adults 4
year olds 2
year olds
M SD M SD M SD
532 53.6 612 53.4 697 106.7
It
is evident that the speech of children gets faster and faster with age.
The
next level is syllable. Utterance duration and word duration seem to
depend heavily on the amount of information
contained in the utterances but syllable/sec seems independent of content, as
long as the sample is large enough to contain a large variety of syllables. For
this reason the number of syllable/sec is the most common measure of speech
production rate. The rate of speech in adults is 5-6 syllables/sec.
Development
of speech rhythm
Findings:
1) Young
children(18-36 months) are unable to imitate sentences lacking normal
rhythm(Eilers,1975)
2) 2
year old tends to use far fewer syllables than do adults, so that their speech
rhythm has fewer syllables per foot or more beats per utterance; in short.it
sounds more syllable timed( Allen and
Hawkins,1980)
3) Syllable
are totally reduced by 2-3 year olds in two phonetic environments
A) word
initial
B) next
to another unstressed syllable( Hawkins,1979)
The
rhythm of speech is an important perceptual cue to our recognition of speech as
meaningful stimuli. The very first word, children produce do not show as much
stress contrast as in adult speech (Ingram,1974:Allen and Hawkins,1980). The
adult rhythm of language is not as easily discerned in the speech of children
in one or two word stages of development. Two syllable words containing one
stressed and unstressed syllable are typically produced as if they were
spondees, with both syllables being given full vowel color and duration. The
only indication of stress is in the raised fundamental frequency of the
stressed syllables. Furthermore, many of the sounds in the unstressed syllable
may be lost, and instead the child produces a nearby, usually adjacent,
stressed syllable. Typically, a child’s reduplication consists of one heavy
accented syllable followed by a heavy unaccented one (Hawkins 1979).
E.g:
ray-ray for raisin or bebe for betty.
Development
of ease in speech
We
have no direct measures of the effort children expend in the production of
speech, either muscular effort or mental effort and thus no findings on this
topic.
Anyway,
some thought is required just before an utterance to plan execution, but once
this planning is accomplished the utterance is executed automatically. When
this conclusion is put together with the data reported earlier on the length of
unfilled pauses in children’s speech, which tend to as the child grows, it
appears that younger children spend more time planning an utterance and that
the planning time decreases as the child develops. Since the rate of speech
increases as children grow, one can concludes that they acquire the ability to
talk with less muscular effort.
RELATED
DISSERTATION
1)AUTHOR:
Nagapoormina
YEAR: 1990
NO.OF
SUBECTS: 12
SUBJECT’S
AGE IN YEAR:3-4 years
LANGUAGE:
Kannada
MATERIAL
USED: conversation,
rhymes, picture description, story telling
RESULTS:
1) All
the subjects had more percent of unfilled pauses, followed by filled pauses,
parenthetical remarks, repetition
2) Disfluencies
occurred more in initial position.
2)AUTHOR:
Indu
YEAR:
1990
NO.OF
SUBJECTS:
12
SUBJECT’S
AGE IN YEAR:
4-5years.
LANGUAGE:kannada
MATERIAL
USED:
conversation, rhymes, picture description, story telling
RESULTS:
1) more
filled pauses followed by repetition and parenthetical remarks.
2) More
disfluencies in the initial part of utterance.
3) AUTHOR:Yamini
YEAR:
1990
NO.OF
SUBJECTS:12
SUBJECT’S
AGE IN YEAR:5-6
years
LANGUAGE:Kannada
conversation,
rhyme, picture description, storytelling.
RESULTS:
1) MATERIAL USED: Unfilled
pauses, filled pauses, parenthetical remarks, audible inspiration occurred more
frequently.
2) Disfluencies
more in initial position around 90%.
4)AUTHOR:
RajendraSwamy
YEAR: 1990
NO.OF
SUBJECTS:
12
SUBJECT’S
AGE IN YEAR:
6-7 years
LANGUAGE:Kannada
MATERIAL
USED:
conversation, rhyme, picture description, storytelling.
RESULTS:1) disfluencies
were more for male subjects
3) filled
pause was most frequently occurring, then comes parenthetical remarks and
repetitions.
Table:
% of disfluencies in normal children (3-7 yrs), summarised by SoumyaSrinivasa
(1992) from the studies of Nagapoornuma, Indu, Yamini and RajendraSwamy.
Disfluency types in %
|
Age(yrs) 3-4 yrs
|
4-5 yrs
|
5-6 yrs
|
6-7 yrs
|
Filled pauses
|
9.6
|
12
|
7.66
|
7.4
|
Unfilled
|
8.6
|
1.52
|
9.2
|
1.53
|
Repetition
|
4
|
0.69
|
3.21
|
6.37
|
Parenthetical remarks
|
2.5
|
5.27
|
7.49
|
6.54
|
False starts
|
0.16
|
0.39
|
6.51
|
2.88
|
Sound prolongation
|
-
|
0.13
|
1.11
|
1.84
|
Part question repeats
|
-
|
0.04
|
-
|
|
Audible inspiration
|
-
|
0.18
|
5.38
|
2.79
|
Broken words
|
-
|
-
|
-
|
|
Hesitations
|
-
|
-
|
-
|
Total 24.86 20.18 35.60 29.67
FACTORS
AFFECTING FLUENCY:
“We
use speech mechanism to produce speech and some people produce speech more
fluently, more easily, smoothly, and rapidly than others. The ease with which
some people speak may result from characteristics present in the mechanisms
they use”
(Stark
Weather, 1987).
Several
factors seems to affect fluency are continuity, rate, effort, rhythm,
physiological factors, motor factors, linguistic
factors, language complexity, grammatical categories, sex, and environmental
factor.
Physiological
factors:
Fluency
is directly related to the characteristics of mechanism of speech production
structure like
Size
and mass of the structure
Proper
strength/tonicity in structures
Coordination
between the movements of structures/systems (respiratory, phonatory and
articulatory).
Perceptual
and neural mechanism influencing timing
Feedback
controls
Physicalwellbeing
The
coordination and timing of speech segments can affect the articulation which in
turn can affect fluency. Others such as reaction time for speech, changes in
the feedback, gestural synchrony during speech can also affect fluency. Certain
anatomical constraints on the child vocal system may also influence fluency. A
younger child shows a smaller vocal tract, less control of the movements of the
vocal tract, coordination, planning, and execution of speech action which also
disrupts fluency.
Van
Riper (1971), indicated that disruption of proper programming of the
physiological movements necessary for fluent speech causes stuttering.
Co-ordination between spatial movements and timing are essential physiological
aspects of fluency (Stark Weather 1987).
Motor
factors:
Muscles
that contract during a speech gesture will receive high frequency neural
impulses at the proper movement. Muscles which are relaxed will receive a low
frequency neural impulse. The capacity to relax antagonist muscles has more to
do with frequency than the capacity to contract agonist muscles, which is
proved in stutterers (Freeman & Ushijima, 1978). Along with the mass and
stiffness of the peripheral mechanism, certain neural mechanisms also have an
important influence on the timing of movements.
Linguistic
factors: One
of the growing demands for fluency comes from the childs development of
language skills, which include:
o Language
capacity (oral & reading)
o Syntactic/grammatical
complexity
o Content/Function
word class
o Utterance
length
o Mother
tongue/other languages
o Linguistic
demands
PHONOLOGY:
Children
become more interested in using longer words, phrases and sentences with
increase in the knowledge of rules of phonology. This places a demand on
children’s motoric skill. They may be able to plan a motoric pattern, but lack
the fluency to execute it at normal speed.
SYNTAX:
Increased
syntactic knowledge is a demand on motor speech production, since it requires
an ability to plan and execute longer utterance.
SEMANTICS:
Development
of semantics is also a demand on fluency because as the child’s vocabulary
increases he has more to choose from, which makes it more difficult and time
consuming to plan an utterance. This may result in increase in the duration and
frequency of pauses, which later reduces with child’s ability.
PRAGMATICS:
Growth
in pragmatics seems to diminish the spontaneity of child’s speech. Their speech
becomes more controlled and directed to more specific purposes. The child
learns skills like turn taking, talking on demand, initiating conversations and
understanding and talking about what their listeners will be interested in.
Language
complexity: Analysis of language samples by Haynes and Hood
(1978) who studied 20 male and 20 female children between 5-6yrs supported that
language influences disfluency especially in the complex modeling condition.
Significant repetition, revisions, incomplete phrases and dysrhythmic
phonations occurred in the complex modeling situation.
Co
articulation: Affects fluency since it is an aspect of syllabic
rate. Co articulation increases with an increased rate. As rate increases,
speakers shorten the duration of vowels and consonants; increasing overlapping
of adjacent sounds.
Grammatical
category: It
is found that the frequency of occurrence of both unfilled and filled pauses is
more before content words than function words (Mac Clay & Osgood, 1959;
Fagen, 1982). The words following filled pauses are difficult to predict and
filled pauses occur mainly before words which are highly uncertain. Filled
pauses are much more common at the beginning of clauses than within clause
(Boomer, 1965; Cook, 1971; Hawkings, 1971) and they to occur before longer and
more complex sentences (Cook, Smith and Lallijee, 1974).
Extra
linguistic Factors:
Age:
Children
and geriatrics speech is longer than adults.
Sex: Children
in both sex have been studied by several investigators. Some studies (Fisher,
1932, Kowal et al 1975, Hayness and Hood, 1977; Yairi, 1981, Wexler and Mysak,
1982) have indicated males as showing greater disfluencies than females in the
age groups 2-6 yrs, others (Kools and Berryman, 1971) have indicated no sex
differences in the dysfluent pattern or in the total number of disfluencies.
Novelty:
New
word – longer duration.
Environmental
Factors:
Person
variables: seniority, position, age, gender, attitude, Confidence in using the
language, knowledge of the topic …
Place
variable: school, home, addressing a gathering, tution classes…
Task
variables: Recitation, Reading, Monologue, Dialogue, Group discussion..
The
person to which child is speaking is also an important factor which influences
fluency. It has been found that the child speaks more fluently when asked to
speak with a puppet than with an experimenter (Martin & Haroldson, 1972).
JOURNAL ARTICLES
1.Characteristics
of speech disfluency and stuttering behaviors in 3- and 4-year-old children. Speech
Lang Hear Res. 2002 Feb;45(1):20-34.
Pellowski MW, Conture EG 2002 studied speech disfluency and stuttering behaviors in
3- and 4-year-old children.
Measures of speech
disfluency appreciably differentiate CWS from CWNS and that 4-year-old CWS
exhibit changes in non re-iterative forms of stuttering as a function of time
since stuttering onset.
2. Characteristics of
stuttering-like disfluencies in Dutch-speaking children.
Fluency Disord. 2007;32(4):310-29.
Epub 2007 Jul 27
Boey RA, Wuyts FL, Van de Heyning PH, De Bodt MS, Heylen L. 2007,Compared the
characteristics of stuttering-like disfluencies in a group of native
Dutch-speaking children who stutter with a group of normally fluent children.
Findings indicate that stuttering-like disfluencies exhibited by
children who stutter are significantly more frequent, longer in duration and
involve more physical tension when compared to those of normally fluent
children.
Karin
B. Wexler , ∗,
Edward D. Mysak , Journal of Fluency
Disorders
Volume 7, Issue 1, 1982, Pages 37-46
Volume 7, Issue 1, 1982, Pages 37-46
Karin B. Wexler 1982,studied
developmental Disfluency in 2-, 4-, and 6-Year-Old Boys in Neutral and Stress
Situations .
Neutral stress
2-yr-olds
higher disfluency
frequencies for word repetitions and phrase repetitions higher frequency of dysrhythmic
phonations
stress
situation
2-yr-olds
higher frequency of
average oscillation higher frequency of dysrhythmic phonations
4.Speaking rate characteristics of
elementary-school-aged children who do and do not stutter.
Department of Speech, Language, and Hearing
Sciences, 336 Dauer Hall, University of Florida, Gainesville, FL 32611-7420,
United States. klogan@ufl.edu
Journal of communication
disorders 2011 Jan-Feb
Kenneth J. Logan 2003,examined language and fluency
characteristics of single utterance (SU) and multiple-utterance (MU)
conversational turns produced by 15 preschoolers who stutter and 15 age- and
sex-matched preschoolers who do not stutter.
Results indicated that the children’s utterances from MU-turns
typically served assertive functions and were significantly longer and more
linguistically complex than their utterances from SU-turns.
Neither group showed a significant difference in disfluency rate
for length-matched utterances from MU- and SU-turns.
References:
- Manning, W. H. (2001).Clinical decision making in fluency disorders(2nded.). Singular Thomson Learning.
- Bloodstein,Hand book of stuttering (5th ed.).
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