Abstract

The purpose of this study was to assess the speech rate, fluency and the type of dysfluencies of normal adults in order to provide a basic data of normal speaking. The number of subjects of this study were 30(14 females and 16 males), and their ages ranged 17 to 36. The rate was measured as syllables per minute (SPM). The speech rates in reading ranged 273-426 with a mean of 348 SPM and in speaking ranges 118-409 (mean=265). The average of their fluencies was 99.1% in reading and 96.9% in speaking. The rater reliability of speech rate in the data assessed by video was very high (r=0.98) and the rater reliability of speech fluency was moderately high (r=0.67). The disfluency types were also analysed from 150 disfluency episodes. Syllable repetition and word interjection were the most common disfluent types.

Keywords

• Speech Rate;
• Fluency;
• Dysfluency;
• Syllables Per Minute (SPM)