Some airflow, volume, and duration characteristics of oral reading

Inspiratory and expiratory airflow (oral + nasal), volume, and duration characteristics during oral reading were investigated for eight young adults. Flow signals, sensed through a facemask-pneumotachometer-pressure transducer system, were quantified and analyzed by a computer program. Results showed that the modification of volume and flow during oral reading was primarily related to the timing of inspiratory and expiratory phases and secondarily to the magnitude of oronasal air volume. Effects of linguistic constraints were observed in inspiratory behavior, within and between sentences. Connected utterances showed lower and more variable peak flows than those reported for isolated syllables or words.