Methods of analysis speech rate: a pilot study

To describe the performance of fluent adults in different measures of speech rate.

The study included 24 fluent adults, of both genders, speakers of Brazilian Portuguese, who were born and still living in the metropolitan region of Belo Horizonte, state of Minas Gerais, aged between 18 and 59 years. Participants were grouped by age: G1 (18-29 years), G2 (30-39 years), G3 (40-49 years), and G4 (50-59 years). The speech samples were obtained following the methodology of the Speech Fluency Assessment Protocol. In addition to the measures of speech rate proposed by the protocol (speech rate in words and syllables per minute), the rate of speech into phonemes per second and the articulation rate with and without the disfluencies were calculated. We used the nonparametric Friedman test and the Wilcoxon test for multiple comparisons. Groups were compared using the nonparametric Kruskal Wallis. The significance level was of 5%.

There were significant differences between measures of speech rate involving syllables. The multiple comparisons showed that all the three measures were different. There was no effect of age for the studied measures. These findings corroborate previous studies.

The inclusion of temporal acoustic measures such as speech rate in phonemes per second and articulation rates with and without disfluencies can be a complementary approach in the evaluation of speech rate.