TY - JOUR
T1 - Speech rate varies with sentence length in typically developing children
AU - Darling-White, Meghan
AU - Banks, Symone Whitney
N1 - Funding Information:
Research reported in this publication was supported by Grant R03DC015607, awarded to the first author (Darling-White), from the National Institute on Deafness and other Communication Disorders of the National Institutes of Health. The content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily reflect the official views of the National Institutes of Health. The authors would like to thank the children and their families who participated in this research as well as the graduate and undergraduate students at The University of Arizona who assisted with data collection and analysis.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2021 American Speech-Language-Hearing Association.
PY - 2021
Y1 - 2021
N2 - Purpose: The primary purpose of this study was to examine the effect of sentence length on speech rate and its characteristics, articulation rate and pauses, in typically developing children. Method: Sixty-two typically developing children between the ages of 10 and 14 years repeated sentences varying in length from two to seven words. Dependent variables included speech rate (syllables per second), articulation rate (syllables per second), and proportion of time spent pausing. Results: Speech rate and articulation rate significantly increased with increases in sentence length, but proportion of time spent pausing did not increase with sentence length. There were no significant main effects of age. Conclusions: This is the first study to suggest that sentence length differentially impacts the component parts of speech rate, articulation rate and pause time. Increases in sentence length led to increases in speech rate, primarily due to increases in articulation rate and not increases in pause time. Articulation rate appears to be highly sensitive to the impact of sentence length, while a higher cognitive–linguistic load may be required to see sentence length effects on pause time.
AB - Purpose: The primary purpose of this study was to examine the effect of sentence length on speech rate and its characteristics, articulation rate and pauses, in typically developing children. Method: Sixty-two typically developing children between the ages of 10 and 14 years repeated sentences varying in length from two to seven words. Dependent variables included speech rate (syllables per second), articulation rate (syllables per second), and proportion of time spent pausing. Results: Speech rate and articulation rate significantly increased with increases in sentence length, but proportion of time spent pausing did not increase with sentence length. There were no significant main effects of age. Conclusions: This is the first study to suggest that sentence length differentially impacts the component parts of speech rate, articulation rate and pause time. Increases in sentence length led to increases in speech rate, primarily due to increases in articulation rate and not increases in pause time. Articulation rate appears to be highly sensitive to the impact of sentence length, while a higher cognitive–linguistic load may be required to see sentence length effects on pause time.
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U2 - 10.1044/2020_JSLHR-20-00276
DO - 10.1044/2020_JSLHR-20-00276
M3 - Article
C2 - 33647220
AN - SCOPUS:85108742095
SN - 1092-4388
VL - 64
SP - 2385
EP - 2391
JO - Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research
JF - Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research
IS - 6s
ER -