Speech activity and respiratory function in asthmatics

Clinical patients and outpatients with bronchial asthma participated in four different studies. Their ventilatory capacity was measured both before and after a standardized interview with the experimenter. It was found that in the majority of cases expiration improved when the asthmatic subjects had used the opportunity to verbalize freely. When they were forced to listen to the experimenter or were interrupted by him there generally was no improvement of the expiratory flow rates. It was concluded that an increase of the amount of verbal production in certain asthmatic patients can result in an improvement of the expiratory function.