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Multiple Sclerosis (MS) causes a variety of symptoms in speech production, such as more frequent pauses and an increase in the duration of pauses in the speech. However, there is almost no data on whether the disease affects speech fluency in other ways, such as changes in the frequency of disfluencies in speech. The main question of this study is the following: if we examine speech fluency in speech tasks requiring different cognitive load, will there be a difference between patients and controls? Twenty people with relapsing-remitting MS (3 men and 17 women) and 20 age- and education-matched control speakers (4 men and 16 women) participated in the study. Speech samples were recorded with each participant in three speech tasks: 1) spontaneous narratives about their own lives, 2) narratives about their previous day, and 3) narrative recalls based on a heard text. In the speech samples, pauses and disfluencies were annotated and the duration of pauses was measured. Then, the frequency of pauses and disfluencies were calculated and the types of disfluencies were examined. The results show that there are differences in the frequency and duration of pauses between people with MS and controls. However, there were no significant differences in the frequency of disfluencies between the groups. The same types of disfluencies occurred in the same frequency in both groups. The results help to better understand the speech production processes in MS. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this study is to analyse the speech rate, pausing and fluency of a patient with young-onset Parkinson's Disease in different stages of the disease. Speech samples of the patient were recorded in the early stages of the disease until after the brain surgery. The recordings were compared to the speech of healthy control speakers. Speech rate, articulation rate, pausing and the frequency of disfluencies were analysed. Results show that all parameters are influenced by the severity of the disease, but articulation rate is the most affected. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study first aimed to investigate disfluency clusters in typical and atypical Finnish adult speakers. Secondly, it aimed to observe possible fluency strategies in speakers representing different fluency levels. In addition to individual disfluency types, we examined different characteristics of disfluency clusters produced by 23 speakers in a fluency continuum. Three adult speaker groups participated in this study: typical speakers with high disfluency frequencies (GA), typical and atypical speakers with very high disfluency frequencies (GB) and atypical speakers with the highest disfluency frequencies (GC). Data were based on a narrative speech task, and disfluency clusters were analysed with both traditional methods and alternative methods. Two statistically significant differences between the speaker groups were found: 1) the length of the clusters was highest in GC compared to other groups, and 2) speakers in GC formulated their utterances more than other groups. Other results, although nonsignificant, were that 3) speakers in GA revised utterances more often than interrupted them compared to GB and GC speakers, and 4) clusters using repetitive words and phrases to maintain fluency were found in GA and GB only. In this study, different fluency levels revealed different strategies in both the production of single disfluencies and in disfluency clusters. It seems that more fluent speakers formulate their messages differently than less fluent speakers, and repetitions can be used to maintain fluency and possibly prevent difficult clusters, as noted with more fluent speakers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of the study is the analysis of the error-repairs of people with cluttering (PWC), whether they repair their speech errors similarly to control speakers or not. Error-repairs were analysed in spontaneous speech samples of 13 PWC and 13 age- and sex-matched control speakers. Error-to-cutoff time, duration of the editing phase, and error-to-repair time were measured. Strategies of repairs (point of interruption, proportion of delays, and types of editing terms and phases) were also examined. Results of the two groups were compared. Results show that there are no differences between the two groups in the total duration of error-repairs. However, there might be differences between the two groups in the self-repair strategies. Results suggest that control speakers might try to plan the error-repairs in parallel with the speech production and they interrupt the speech when the repair is available. In contrast, PWC interrupt speaking earlier perhaps to focus on planning self-repairs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Cluttering is a fluency disorder which can be characterised by excessive disfluencies. However, the low number of studies dealing with the analysis of disfluencies in cluttering show contradictory results. The aim of this article is to analyse disfluency clusters in cluttered, fast and typical speech. Frequency of all disfluency clusters and those complex disfluencies which contain more than two constituents were analysed. The number and types of the constituents of complex disfluencies and the reason of their occurrence were analysed in detail. Results show that complex disfluencies occurred the most frequently in cluttered speech, and the least frequently in exceptionally rapid speech (ERS). Persons who clutter (PWC) had more and much longer complex disfluencies than typical speakers. Complex disfluencies which suggest difficulties in linguistic formulation occurred in cluttering significantly more times than in typical speech. The results bring us closer to understanding why there are perceptually more disfluencies in cluttered speech than in typical one. In addition, they also seem to strengthen the notion that cluttering is a language disorder. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this paper was to investigate the VOT of voiceless plosives (/p, t, k/) in the speech of Hungarian-speaking elderly. Read speech of 25 old (70 to 90 years) and 25 young (21 to 32 years) was analyzed. In each recording, the VOT of phonologically short [p, t, k] was measured. Our data show that VOT values of all three types of voiceless plosives would exhibit significant differences both in old and in young Hungarians' speech. Bilabial and alveolar plosives had significantly longer VOT in old subjects' speech than in that of young subjects, while old subjects produced significantly shorter VOTs in pronouncing [k] than their younger peers. We argue that these results are attributable to (1) significantly slower rate of articulation (yielding longer speech sounds in general), and (2) the articulatory and aerodynamic background of the production of plosives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• Speech rhythm in cluttering and control speech were analyzed. • There is only a slight difference between the groups in speech rhythm. • The timing differences between cluttered and control speech are manifested primarily in the articulation rate. Cluttering is a type of fluency disorder characterized by a speech rate which is perceived to be fast and/or irregular as well as by an abnormal speech rhythm. As far as we know, no research has been conducted as yet using objective measurements and acoustic phonetic description on the rhythm of cluttered speech. The aim of this study is to show by objective measurements whether there are any differences between the rhythm of cluttered and control speech, and which parameters point to such differences. For the analysis, recordings of spontaneous speech samples were taken from people who clutter (PWC) as well as from control speakers. Typical speech rhythm values and articulation rate were calculated in each speech sample. Results have confirmed that the rhythm of cluttering is slightly different from that of control speech in terms of various values, but the effect size is only small. It must be noted, however, that the difference between the two groups was not apparent in all analyzed values. The timing differences between cluttered and control speech are manifested primarily in the articulation rate while peculiarities in speech rhythm are almost negligible. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]