Factors affecting judgments of fluency: II. Word repetitions

Six speech samples containing varying amounts of whole-word repetitions were tape-recorded and presented to 36 male and 36 female listeners. For each sample, listeners were asked to make judgments of fluent, disfluent, and stuttered speech, and to answer the question, “Would you recommend speech therapy?” Results showed that samples containing 5% or more word repetitions were not judged fluent speech by a majority of listeners. Judgments of disfluent and stuttered speech were nearly equal for speech samples containing word repetitions from 5% to 15%. At 20%, however, the judgments of stuttered speech were found to be more likely than judgments of disfluent speech. A majority of listeners recommended clinical services for speech samples containing 5% or more word repetitions. Generally, the results indicated that (1) the presence of whole-word repetitions is not normal regardless of frequency, (2) fluent speech may not contain 5% or more word repetitions, and (3) with 20% word repetitions the judgments of stuttering may be more likely than judgments of disfluency.