Speech Rate Modification and Its Effects on Fluency Reversal in Fluent Speakers and People Who Stutter.
Slow the voice—by singing or altered feedback—and stutters drop right away.
01Research in Context
What this study did
Howell et al. (2000) asked 20 fluent adults and the adults who stutter to read out loud.
They slowed speech three ways: delayed feedback, shifted pitch feedback, and singing.
After each task they counted stuttered words to see if rate drops cut dysfluencies.
What they found
Singing and both altered feedback types cut stuttered words by about half.
The slower the speech, the fewer the stutters.
Results fit the idea that fast plans overload the speaker’s motor buffer.
How this fits with other research
Montes et al. (2021) got the same fluency gain, but they used awareness training instead of rate control.
Both studies show you can attack disfluency from two angles—rate or awareness—and still win.
Gibbs et al. (2018) and Rojahn et al. (2012) also used sound—background music—to reduce vocal stereotypy.
Their music worked because it was noncontingent and preferred, not because it slowed rate.
So auditory input helps vocal control, but the active ingredient changes with the target.
Why it matters
If a client stutters, try having them sing the sentence first, then fade to normal speech.
You get fast fluency with zero punishment and no extra materials.
Use the same trick as a warm-up before tough speaking tasks.
Want CEUs on This Topic?
The ABA Clubhouse has 60+ free CEUs — live every Wednesday. Ethics, supervision & clinical topics.
Join Free →Start the session with a 30-second sung version of the target sentence, then shift to normal speech while keeping the slow pace.
02At a glance
03Original abstract
A theory has been proposed recently that asserts that the problem that people who stutter have arises when these speakers attempt to execute speech at a faster rate than planning processes allow. This leads speakers to complete words before the following one is ready. Plan unavailability usually happens on the more complex content words rather than the relatively simple function words. There are two ways of dealing with this situation when it arises. Speakers can (1) delay production of a content word by repeating prior function words or (2) carry on and attempt to produce the following content word and gamble that the remainder of the plan arrives while it is being executed. The former strategy does not lead speakers to persist in their dysfluency, while the latter does. It is proposed that the pressure on speech rate that leads speakers to adopt the latter strategy is particularly acute around adolescence. In this article two experiments are reported which test the effects of rate on fluency. In Experiment 1, fluent speakers are induced to produce stuttering-like dysfluencies on content words using a commentary task. A prediction of the theory is that procedures known to induce fluency have to produce local slowing of speech so that planning and execution can get back in synchrony. This prediction is confirmed for frequency-shifted feedback and when speakers who stutter have to sing in Experiment 2. Results are discussed in terms of the model for the etiology of stuttering based on plan unavailability. The implications of the results are also discussed with respect to the diagnosis of the disorder and how it can be treated.
Journal of developmental and physical disabilities, 2000 · doi:10.1023/a:1009428029167