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From: Yvonne van Zaalen
Date: 18 Apr 2010
Time: 04:59:30 -0500
Remote Name: 84.81.119.196
Dear Chelsey, thank you very much for your question about the possibility to measure resource allocation. Of course it is always difficult to measure covert processes, but...of course there are ways to come near it. One of the most striking observations in cluttering is the effect of the speech task on either language or speech production. Fluent speakers and persons who stutter usually adept their speech to the complexity of the task. So, the more difficult the speech task is, the lower their articulatory rate will be (for references see van Zaalen, 2009). In PWC this adjustment of speed control is not always present. For instance persons with cluttering on the phonological level produced complex polysyllabic words at a fast rate, and even when they discovered that they had difficulty pronouncing these words the keept their fast speed, where controls and people who stutter adjusted their speed to the complex speed task. Another example is the fact that people with cluttering at the syntactical level show similar speech rates when reading, retelling a story or in running speech. In the same research we found that fluent people and PWS did adjust their speech to the speech task. And finally, it is known that some PWC can be fluent and very intelligble in many speaking situations and demonstrate disfluencies or moments of unintelligibility when they have to answer spontaneously difficult questions, like "What are your thoughts about the Obama administration"? After they have generated their message the moments of disfluencies or unitelligibility disappear again. A good example of a person with cluttering and phonological problems at a high level of language complexity is the Dutch pre-minister Balkenende. When he speaks in parliament he is an intelligble speaker, with beautiful sentences. When he has to answer a question of journalists his speech is full of coarticulation moments and his mean articulatory rate raises till 9.2 syllables per second. He is aware of this process and tries to adjust his speech by speaking in tapped syllables and point by point. Further research in cluttering should be aimed at the effect of language complexity on speech rate and language production (sentence structures and word structures) to better understand the resource allocation in cluttering. Thanks again Chelsy for this question and I am looking forward to read responses on this issue. Warm regards Yvonne