Key word signing: perceived and acoustic differences between signed and spoken narratives

Key-word-sign (KWS) and speech-only programs differ in the results they achieve with nonspeaking individuals. This difference might be traced to suprasegmental aspects of speech. In an earlier study, Windsor and Fristoe (1989) showed that untrained listeners could distinguish speech produced using KWS from speech only. In the present study, acoustic measures as well as listener judgments of KWS and spoken-only (S-O) narratives were obtained. Compared to S-O narratives, KWS narratives were produced with a slower articulation rate, due to increased pause and speech segment duration and increased pause number. Within-sentence pauses in KWS narratives tended to occur immediately after a signed word.