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From: David Ward
Date: 05 May 2010
Time: 04:45:32 -0500
Remote Name: 134.225.114.26
Hi Jennifer, and thanks for your question. I would say that increased rate, by itself, is not cluttering, although if it is excessively fast it may be regarded as tachilalia. As to where a fast speaker might appear on a spectrum - I think that would depend on any co-occuring features - for example, whether speech intelligibility was compromised by any over-coarticulation (or excessive running together of speech sounds). Of course, the faster we speak, the greater the likelihood of increased coarticulation, so once again the point to which any coarticulation might be seen as pathological is not an easy judgment to make. I would also look at language production as another potential indicator of cluttering spectrum.