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Speech disfluency

Speech disfluency, also known as dysfluency, refers to any interruption in the forward flow of speech that disrupts its rhythm, rate, or continuity, including phenomena such as repetitions of sounds, syllables, or words; prolongations of sounds; silent or filled pauses (e.g., "uh" or "um"); and self-repairs or corrections.^[1]^[2] These disfluencies are a normal aspect of spoken language production, occurring in typical speech at an average rate of approximately 6 instances per 100 words, often arising from momentary difficulties in speech planning or formulation.^[3] In contrast, excessive or atypical disfluencies can characterize fluency disorders, such as stuttering or cluttering, where they may involve physical tension, longer durations, or greater frequency, impacting communication effectiveness and quality of life.^[1]^[4] Disfluencies serve various functions in everyday communication, potentially signaling upcoming challenges in word selection or aiding listener comprehension by drawing attention to important information, though they can also reflect underlying cognitive or motor processing delays.^[4] In typical development, children aged 2–4 years exhibit higher rates of disfluency (up to 10–15% of utterances) as they acquire complex language skills, but these usually resolve without intervention; advanced vocabulary or syntactic complexity in young speakers can increase their occurrence.^[1] Among adults, disfluencies are more frequent under stress, cognitive load, or in bilingual contexts, yet they rarely exceed baseline levels unless associated with neurological conditions like Parkinson's disease or aphasia.^[4] In fluency disorders, disfluencies are qualitatively and quantitatively distinct from normal variations. Stuttering, the most studied fluency disorder, affects about 1% of the population lifelong, with a higher incidence in males (ratio of 4:1) and often beginning in early childhood; it features part-word repetitions, blocks (involuntary pauses), and prolongations, sometimes accompanied by secondary behaviors like eye blinking or grimacing.^[1]^[2] Cluttering, less common (prevalence around 0.0013–1.2%), involves rapid or irregular speech rates, excessive disfluencies, and atypical pauses, leading to reduced intelligibility and poor awareness of the issue.^[1] Both disorders have multifactorial origins, including genetic predispositions, neurophysiological differences in speech motor control, and environmental influences, though exact mechanisms remain under investigation.^[3]^[1] Beyond clinical contexts, speech disfluencies have implications for linguistics, psychology, and technology; for instance, they provide insights into real-time language processing models and pose challenges for automatic speech recognition systems, which must account for their variability to improve accuracy.^[4] Research highlights that while disfluencies can enhance perceived sincerity or thoughtfulness in conversation, frequent ones may contribute to social stigma or anxiety, particularly in disorders.^[4] Overall, understanding speech disfluency bridges normal communicative processes and pathological conditions, informing interventions aimed at improving fluency across diverse populations.^[3]^[1]

Core Concepts

Definition and Scope

Speech disfluency refers to any interruption in the regular flow of otherwise fluent speech, including non-lexical fillers such as "uh" and "um," silent or filled pauses, word or phrase repetitions, and self-corrections or revisions. These phenomena occur when speakers momentarily halt or alter their utterance due to planning difficulties, cognitive processing demands, or monitoring of ongoing speech production. In typical speakers, disfluencies appear in approximately 6% of words in spontaneous speech, serving as natural markers of real-time language formulation rather than indicators of impairment.^[3] The scope of speech disfluency encompasses both normal variations in healthy individuals and their overlap with mild fluency challenges, where such interruptions do not significantly impair communication but reflect universal aspects of spoken language processing.^[6] Prevalence is notably higher in young children, with rates reaching up to 10% of syllables or words in preschoolers aged 2 to 5 years during periods of rapid language development, compared to lower frequencies in adults.^[7] Stressed or cognitively loaded conditions in adults can elevate these rates, underscoring disfluencies as adaptive responses to communicative pressures rather than pathological features.^[3] Basic examples include fillers like "you know" for hesitation, brief pauses to gather thoughts, and self-corrections such as revising a misspoken phrase, all of which are ubiquitous in everyday conversation across languages. The study of speech disfluencies first gained attention in linguistic research during the early 20th century, as scholars began analyzing spoken language patterns through emerging technologies like phonograph recordings, distinguishing them from the idealized fluency of written text.^[8] This foundational work laid the groundwork for viewing disfluencies as integral to discourse production, evolving into modern examinations of their cognitive and interactive roles.^[8]

Differentiation from Fluency Disorders

Speech disfluencies refer to normal interruptions in the flow of speech, such as occasional fillers or revisions, that occur infrequently and do not significantly impair communication.^[1] In contrast, fluency disorders like stuttering and cluttering involve excessive, involuntary disruptions that are more frequent, often accompanied by physical tension or struggle, and can negatively affect social, academic, or occupational functioning.^[1] For instance, typical disfluencies are non-disruptive and transient, whereas stuttering features repetitive blocks or prolongations exceeding diagnostic thresholds, and cluttering presents as rapid, disorganized speech with reduced awareness of errors.^[1] The American Speech-Language-Hearing Association (ASHA) provides guidelines for differentiating these through comprehensive assessment, emphasizing frequency, type, duration, and impact of disfluencies.^[1] Diagnostic criteria for fluency disorders, aligned with DSM-5-TR, require observable disruptions (e.g., stuttering-like disfluencies such as part-word repetitions or blocks occurring on ≥3% of syllables) alongside self-awareness, tension, or avoidance behaviors that hinder effective communication.^[1] Overall disfluency rates exceeding 10% of syllables or words may signal a potential disorder, particularly when combined with secondary characteristics like facial grimacing in stuttering or excessive pausing and poor intelligibility in cluttering.^[1] These thresholds help clinicians distinguish normal variations from pathological conditions, focusing not only on quantitative measures but also on qualitative impact.^[1] A key example of the distinction is normal hesitation during speech planning, such as inserting an "um" while formulating a thought, which lacks tension and resolves quickly, versus stuttering's involuntary sound prolongations (e.g., "Ssss-sun") or complete blocks preventing sound production.^[1] Cluttering, as a separate disorder, manifests in hurried, erratic speech patterns like collapsing syllables or abandoning sentences mid-thought, differing from typical disfluencies by its disorganized nature and frequent co-occurrence with other language issues.^[1] Developmental stuttering affects approximately 1% of the population persistently, often emerging from typical childhood disfluencies in 5-8% of preschoolers, with about 80-90% recovering naturally without intervention. This overlap underscores the importance of monitoring early disfluencies for persistence beyond age 5 or escalation in severity.

Types of Disfluencies

Fillers and Interjections

Fillers, also known as filled pauses or hesitation markers, are non-lexical vocalizations or short words inserted into speech to occupy pauses while the speaker plans their next utterance or retrieves lexical items.^[9] In English, common examples include "um," "uh," and "er," which serve to bridge gaps without contributing semantic content.^[10] Equivalent forms appear across languages, such as "euh" in French, a vocalic hesitation sound akin to "um" used during word search or prosodic planning.^[11] In Japanese, fillers like "ano" and "eto" function similarly, often marking discourse boundaries or lexical retrieval efforts in spontaneous speech.^[12] A notable interjection among fillers is "hmm," which originates as an onomatopoeic representation of humming and dates to the 19th century in English texts (first recorded in 1854), where it expresses pondering or uncertainty.^[13] These vocalized fillers play key roles in communication, such as signaling ongoing turn-holding to prevent interruption during planning.^[14] They also facilitate memory retrieval by indicating cognitive effort in word selection, with neural studies showing heightened cortical activity during their production compared to fluent speech.^[15] Additionally, fillers help sustain listener attention by filling potential silences that might otherwise signal disengagement, unlike their silent counterparts in pauses.^[16] In monologues, such as lectures or presentations, fillers typically comprise about 4% of spoken content, reflecting their prevalence in structured yet spontaneous discourse.^[17] Usage varies by gender, with women employing "um" approximately 22% more frequently than men, while men use "uh" over 250% more often, a pattern observed in large corpora of conversational English.^[18] Situational factors influence frequency as well, with higher rates in public speaking due to increased cognitive load and anxiety, where fillers exceed baseline levels to manage planning under scrutiny.^[19] Regarding "hmm," it specifically conveys absorption, hesitation, or reflective processing, often with a prolonged, hummed tone that distinguishes it from the shorter, affirmative "hm" used for simple agreement or acknowledgment.^[10]

Repetitions and Revisions

Repetitions and revisions represent key types of speech disfluencies characterized by the recycling or alteration of lexical elements during utterance production. Word repetitions involve the immediate reiteration of a single word, such as "big big house," while phrase repetitions entail restarting a multi-word sequence, as in "I went to the I went to the store." Revisions, often termed self-repairs, occur when a speaker interrupts and corrects a prior segment, exemplified by "the red not blue car," where the initial descriptor is replaced to align with the intended meaning.^[20]^[21] These disfluencies serve essential functions in speech production, primarily enabling self-monitoring, error correction, and reformulation of ideas to maintain communicative accuracy. According to Levelt's model, self-repairs typically unfold in three phases: the reparandum (the erroneous or problematic segment), an editing phase marked by interruption and optional fillers, and the repair itself, which often incorporates repetition of preceding material to preserve syntactic continuity. In fluent speech, such repetitions and revisions occur at a rate of approximately 1-2% of words or syllables, reflecting normal planning adjustments, though this frequency rises to 3-5% or higher in complex narratives due to increased cognitive demands.^[20]^[22]^[23] In child speech development, repetitions play a constructive role by facilitating vocabulary acquisition and phonological practice, allowing young speakers to experiment with sounds and structures as they build linguistic competence; for instance, a toddler might say "dog dog run" to reinforce word familiarity during early multi-word combinations. Among adults, these disfluencies often indicate heightened cognitive load, such as during multitasking or topic shifts, where revisions help refine imprecise formulations to enhance clarity.^[24]^[25]^[23] Measurement of repetitions and revisions typically employs a disfluency index, calculated as the number of repeated or revised words (or instances) per 100 syllables in a speech sample, providing a standardized metric for linguistic analysis and fluency assessment. This approach counts each repetition event once, regardless of iteration length, and is commonly applied in conversational or narrative samples to quantify self-repair frequency without overemphasizing minor variations.^[26]^[27]

Pauses and Prolongations

Pauses and prolongations represent key temporal disruptions in speech disfluency, characterized by interruptions in the flow of articulation that extend beyond typical rhythmic patterns. Silent pauses involve brief or prolonged silences within or between words, often ranging from 0.5 to 2 seconds in duration, with those exceeding 2 seconds frequently classified as dysfluent blocks that hinder smooth production.^[6] Filled pauses, by contrast, are vocalized fillers such as "uh" or "um" that occupy these silent intervals, maintaining the speaker's turn while signaling hesitation, with average durations around 200 milliseconds for "uh" and slightly longer for "um."^[28] Prolongations occur when sounds or syllables are unnaturally extended, such as drawing out a consonant in "sss-so" or a vowel for emphasis, distinguishing them from intentional prosodic lengthening by their association with production difficulty.^[29] These disfluencies serve critical functions in speech planning, primarily providing the speaker with additional time for lexical retrieval and syntactic formulation during online production.^[30] In spontaneous English speech, the average duration of pauses between words is approximately 200-500 milliseconds, allowing for cognitive processing without fully halting discourse, though disfluent instances extend this timeframe to accommodate heightened planning demands.^[31] For instance, longer pauses often precede complex phrases, reflecting articulatory preparation and prosodic boundary marking, as evidenced in studies of pause postures where vocal tract adjustments during silence correlate with upcoming utterance length.^[32] Acoustically, prolongations are quantified by their deviation from normative sound durations, typically involving extensions that exceed standard phonetic timings—such as vowel or consonant lengthening beyond twice the expected length in cases of stuttering-related disfluency.^[33] Silent and filled pauses differ in their spectral profiles: silent pauses produce no audible signal, while filled pauses exhibit low-frequency formants characteristic of schwa-like vowels, with durations influencing listener perceptions of fluency and processing load.^[34] These acoustic markers not only disrupt temporal rhythm but also cue listeners to potential revisions, as pauses attenuate semantic predictability in comprehension.^[34] In specific contexts, pauses and prolongations increase among bilingual speakers during code-switching, where unfilled pauses frequently mark transitions between languages to facilitate integration and reduce production errors.^[35] Similarly, high-stakes conversations, such as public speaking or interviews, amplify their occurrence due to elevated cognitive load, leading to more frequent silent pauses for strategic planning.^[30] While repetitions can sometimes substitute for pauses in simpler planning scenarios, prolongations remain a distinct marker of articulatory tension in demanding situations.^[29]

Underlying Factors

Developmental Origins

Speech disfluencies emerge as part of typical language development, beginning with proto-disfluencies in infancy during the babbling stage. Around 6 to 12 months, infants produce repetitive vocalizations, such as reduplicated babbling (e.g., "ba-ba"), which serve as precursors to fluent speech by practicing motor patterns and sound combinations essential for later articulation.^[36] These early repetitions are not interruptions in connected speech but foundational exercises linked to emerging phonological skills, occurring without awareness or disruption to communication.^[37] Disfluencies become more apparent in toddlers during rapid language acquisition, peaking between ages 2 and 4 when children produce up to 10% disfluent words in their speech. This increase stems from the cognitive demands of expanding vocabulary and sentence formation, with common types including whole-word repetitions (e.g., "I want want milk") and interjections (e.g., "um"). By preschool age, repetitions often correlate with grammatical complexity, such as hesitations on novel syntactic structures recently acquired, like multi-clause sentences. Frequencies stabilize or slightly elevate around 9% in some studies of typically developing children at this stage, reflecting the balance between expressive intent and motor execution.^[38]^[39]^[40] Environmental influences, including parental speech rate, modulate disfluency levels; faster parental speaking can heighten child disfluencies by modeling rushed production, while slower, deliberate speech supports smoother output. Approximately 85% of children aged 2 to 6 exhibit these transient disfluencies, which typically decrease naturally without intervention as fluency matures around age 7.^[1]^[6] In adulthood, disfluencies may increase under stress or high cognitive load, manifesting as occasional pauses or fillers but remaining distinct from fluency disorders unless pathologically persistent.^[41]^[42]

Cognitive and Neurological Mechanisms

Speech disfluencies often emerge from disruptions in the cognitive processes underlying normal speech production, as described in Levelt's modular model of language generation. This model posits three primary stages: conceptualization, where the speaker forms the intended message; formulation, involving grammatical and phonological encoding; and articulation, the motor execution of speech. Disfluencies such as pauses and repetitions frequently arise during conceptualization when speakers struggle to organize complex ideas, leading to delays in message planning. In the formulation stage, challenges in lexical selection or syntactic assembly can trigger revisions or word repetitions as the speaker attempts to resolve mismatches between intended and produced forms. For instance, the tip-of-the-tongue phenomenon exemplifies a formulation-stage blockage, where semantic knowledge is accessible but phonological retrieval fails, resulting in temporary hesitations or fillers.^[43]^[44] Neurologically, speech production relies on a network including the basal ganglia for sequencing and timing of utterances, and the left inferior frontal gyrus (Broca's area) for phonological and syntactic formulation. Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) studies of normal speech reveal activation in the basal ganglia during rhythmic and planned vocalizations, suggesting its role in coordinating smooth output; disruptions here, as seen in broader fluency variations, correlate with increased pauses for planning. The left inferior frontal gyrus shows heightened activity during word retrieval and error detection, with fMRI evidence indicating greater engagement when speakers navigate syntactically demanding structures, potentially leading to prolongations or restarts. These regions interact via cortico-basal ganglia loops to ensure efficient processing, and atypical activation patterns can amplify disfluencies under load.^[45]^[46] Cognitive factors like working memory load and emotional stress further modulate disfluency rates. Increased working memory demands, as in dual-task paradigms requiring simultaneous cognitive processing, elevate repetition frequencies by taxing the central executive's capacity to maintain speech plans, with studies showing disfluency rates rising under such conditions due to divided attention. Emotional stress activates the amygdala, prolonging neural responses during speech anticipation and exacerbating sound prolongations or blocks through heightened arousal that interferes with motor control. According to the monitoring theory, an internal perceptual loop allows speakers to detect and self-edit errors pre-articulatorily, where low lexical error rates (typically 1-2% in production) prompt revisions to maintain accuracy, though excessive monitoring can introduce additional hesitations.^[47]^[48]^[49]

Linguistic and Cultural Variations

Language-Specific Patterns

Speech disfluencies exhibit notable variations across languages, influenced by structural features such as rhythm, syntax, and phonology. In English, a stress-timed language, fillers like "um" and "uh" predominate, often aligning with the frequent occurrence of the schwa (/ə/) sound in unstressed syllables, which facilitates hesitation without disrupting the rhythmic flow. These fillers serve as planning signals in spontaneous speech, appearing more frequently at phrase boundaries to maintain the language's characteristic stress patterns. In contrast, Japanese, a topic-prominent language, relies heavily on fillers such as "ano" (meaning "that" or used as a hesitation marker) and "etto," which integrate into sentence-initial positions to signal topic introduction or delay, reflecting the language's flexible word order and reliance on context for coherence.^[50] Studies of Japanese presentations indicate that filler choice, including "ano," correlates with speech level and disfluency type, with higher usage in formal contexts to manage cognitive load during topic shifts.^[50] Morphologically rich languages like German show elevated rates of repetitions as a disfluency type, attributed to the complexity of inflectional endings and syntactic planning required for agreement.^[51] Corpus analyses reveal that German speakers produce more hesitations overall compared to English speakers, with repetitions often serving as self-repairs in morphologically dense constructions, such as verb conjugations or case markings.^[51] This pattern contrasts with simpler morphological systems, where revisions are less frequent due to reduced planning demands. Phonological structures further shape filler forms; in tonal languages like Mandarin Chinese, vowel-based fillers such as "en" and "e" are common, accommodating the language's pitch contours without altering lexical tones.^[52] Analysis of Mandarin monologues from proficiency tests demonstrates that "en" occurs more in male speech and at pause sites, functioning to hold the floor while preserving prosodic integrity in syllable-timed rhythm.^[52] Bilingual speakers experience heightened disfluencies during code-switching, particularly at language boundaries where activation of multiple lexicons increases planning errors.^[53] Research on spontaneous bilingual dialogues confirms a direct correlation, with disfluencies like fillers and repetitions surging in switch points due to interference between languages.^[53] For instance, in Spanish-English bilinguals, code-switches often trigger additional pauses or "eh"-like fillers, equivalents to English "uh," tied to the prosodic resets needed across syllable-timed and stress-timed systems.^[54] These patterns underscore how linguistic typology modulates disfluency, with non-pro-drop languages like English exhibiting more explicit subject-related pauses compared to pro-drop languages like Spanish, where pronoun omission reduces syntactic hesitation points.^[55]

Cross-Cultural Perceptions

In Western cultures, speech fillers such as "um" and "ah" are often perceived as indicators of uncertainty, lack of preparation, or reduced competence, particularly in professional or public speaking contexts where fluency is equated with authority and effectiveness.^[56] This view leads to training programs in public speaking that explicitly aim to minimize their use to enhance perceived professionalism.^[57] In contrast, some Asian cultures interpret pauses in speech more positively, associating them with thoughtful reflection, respect for the listener, and careful consideration rather than hesitation or weakness.^[58] For instance, in Chinese communication norms, a brief pause before responding signals that the speaker has given due thought to the matter, aligning with values of harmony and deliberation.^[59] Societal stigma surrounding speech disfluencies, including stuttering, tends to be more pronounced in collectivist cultures compared to individualistic ones, where deviations from fluent speech may evoke greater social discomfort and expectations of conformity to group norms.^[60] Studies comparing attitudes in China (collectivist) and the United States (individualistic) reveal that Chinese respondents exhibit more negative stereotypes toward individuals who stutter, viewing them as less socially competent or anxious, which can heighten embarrassment and avoidance behaviors. Recent research as of 2025 confirms these patterns, with Chinese college students holding more negative attitudes toward stuttering compared to American counterparts.^[61]^[62] This contrasts with relatively higher tolerance in individualistic societies, where personal expression and imperfections may be more readily accepted as part of diverse communication styles.^[60] Gender biases amplify criticism of disfluencies globally, with women often facing harsher judgments for using fillers or exhibiting hesitations, as these are stereotyped as signs of incompetence or emotional instability more readily than in men.^[63] In educational and professional settings, disfluent female speakers receive lower evaluations on credibility and expertise compared to their male counterparts, perpetuating a double standard rooted in gendered expectations of assertive speech.^[63] Age-related biases further influence perceptions, as disfluencies in elderly speakers are frequently dismissed or normalized as inevitable consequences of aging rather than addressed as communication challenges, leading to underestimation of their impact on social participation.^[64] Interventions for speech disfluencies increasingly incorporate cultural adaptations to address these perceptual differences, such as tailoring therapy to respect collectivist values like group harmony in Asian contexts or emphasizing individual empowerment in Western settings.^[1] In multicultural and Indigenous communities, narrative-based approaches have shown promise by integrating storytelling traditions to reframe disfluencies as part of cultural identity and resilience, rather than deficits, thereby reducing stigma and enhancing engagement.^[65] These adaptations prioritize community involvement and linguistic relevance, improving outcomes in diverse populations.^[1]

Research and Applications

Historical Studies

Early research on speech disfluencies in the 20th century laid the groundwork for distinguishing typical variations in spoken language from pathological conditions like stuttering. In the 1930s, speech pathologist Wendell Johnson pioneered studies at the University of Iowa that differentiated normal disfluencies—such as repetitions and hesitations common in young children's speech—from stuttering, arguing that the latter often stemmed from parental misinterpretations rather than inherent speech defects.^[66] Johnson's work, including analyses of speech patterns in preschoolers, emphasized environmental and psychological factors, influencing the establishment of speech clinics and diagnostic approaches that viewed many disfluencies as developmentally appropriate.^[66] Building on this, linguistic analyses in the 1920s and 1930s, notably by Leonard Bloomfield, examined fillers like "uh" and "um" as discourse particles integral to language structure, rather than mere interruptions. In his 1933 book Language, Bloomfield categorized such elements within the broader framework of morphology and syntax, highlighting their role in natural utterance formation without delving into psychological causes.^[67] By the 1950s, empirical quantification advanced with Howard Maclay and Charles Osgood's 1959 study of hesitation phenomena in spontaneous English speech. Analyzing transcripts from 12 conference participants, they measured occurrences of filled pauses, unfilled pauses, repeats, and false starts, finding these disfluencies clustered at syntactic boundaries like clause ends, thus linking them to linguistic planning.^[68] The 1960s saw the emergence of psycholinguistic models attributing disfluencies to cognitive processes. Frieda Goldman-Eisler's experiments, detailed in her 1968 book Psycholinguistics: Experiments in Spontaneous Speech, interpreted pauses and hesitations as markers of planning errors during idea formulation and lexical retrieval in real-time production. Her findings, based on timed analyses of narrative speech, demonstrated that longer pauses correlated with conceptual complexity, shifting focus from mere counts to underlying mental mechanisms.^[69] A key milestone came in the 1970s with the development of conversation analysis by Harvey Sacks, Emanuel Schegloff, and Gail Jefferson, who integrated disfluency counts into the study of everyday talk. Their 1974 paper on turn-taking introduced precise transcription methods that captured self-repairs, overlaps, and hesitations as interactional resources, revealing how disfluencies facilitated sequence organization in dialogues. However, pre-1980s research remained limited by its near-exclusive emphasis on English-speaking populations, primarily from Anglo-European backgrounds, which overlooked linguistic and cultural variations in disfluency patterns worldwide.^[65]^[70]

Modern Findings and Interventions

Recent advancements in the study of speech disfluencies have leveraged corpus linguistics to analyze large-scale spontaneous speech datasets, revealing patterns in filler usage and repairs. For instance, analyses of the Switchboard corpus, a collection of over 2,400 telephone conversations, have demonstrated that disfluencies such as "um" and "uh" occur at rates of 6-10 per 100 words, with self-repairs comprising about 40% of all disfluencies, evolving in frequency based on conversational context and speaker familiarity.^[71] Updated resources like FluencyBank Timestamped provide timestamped annotations for 5.3 hours of speech from diverse populations, enabling finer-grained examination of disfluency timing and types in both typical and atypical speakers.^[72] These methodologies have been complemented by multimodal approaches, including eye-tracking and electroencephalography (EEG), which facilitate real-time detection of disfluency precursors. Eye-tracking studies show that anticipatory gaze shifts during disfluent speech predict upcoming repairs with latencies under 300 milliseconds, while EEG reveals enhanced theta-band activity (4-8 Hz) in the prefrontal cortex preceding fillers, indicating cognitive planning disruptions.^[73]^[74] Key findings from post-2010 research highlight unexpected adaptive roles for disfluencies. In the 2020s, AI-driven models have advanced disfluency prediction, achieving accuracies around 90% in therapeutic contexts by integrating acoustic features and neural signals. For example, multimodal deep learning frameworks combining EEG and facial expressions forecast disfluent events in ad-lib speech with 85-92% precision, aiding early intervention in clinical settings.^[74]^[75] Therapeutic interventions have evolved with evidence-based techniques and technology. Fluency shaping methods, which train gradual speech rate reduction and smooth onsets, have been shown to decrease filler frequency by 40-60% in adults after 12-16 weeks of therapy, with sustained gains in 70% of participants when combined with cognitive restructuring.^[76] Devices like SpeechEasy provide real-time auditory feedback via delayed or frequency-shifted playback; studies have reported reductions of up to 70% in stuttering moments during initial trials, though long-term efficacy varies and often requires ongoing practice.^[76] For non-English speakers, multicultural adaptations emphasize language-specific norms; for instance, interventions for bilingual Spanish-English users incorporate code-switching strategies to minimize disfluencies at language boundaries, improving fluency by 30-50% in narrative tasks.^[77]^[78] As of 2025, research gaps persist in neurodiversity, particularly autism-related disfluencies, where fillers like "um" occur at twice the rate of neurotypical speech but may serve social signaling functions rather than impairments. Ongoing studies explore tailored interventions, such as neuroaffirming approaches that reframe disfluencies as communicative strengths, with preliminary trials showing reduced therapy dropout rates by 25% in autistic adults.^[79]^[80] Recent advancements as of November 2025 include AI models for automatic speech recognition that handle disfluencies with over 95% accuracy, enhancing real-time transcription for diverse speakers.^[81]

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disfluent silent pauses in speech have consequences for listeners
... filled pauses like er and um (e.g., Hawkins, 1971). By contrast, in the present paper we focus explicitly on silent pauses, examining the ways in which they ...
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Hesitation and monitoring phenomena in bilingual speech
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Babbling development as seen in canonical babbling ratios - NIH
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Developmental Levels of Disfluency - Center for Stuttering Therapy
The disfluencies consist of multisyllabic and phrase repetitions, revisions and interjections. Repetitions are slow and even, and two or fewer occur per ...<|separator|>
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Speech disfluencies in typically developing Finnish-speaking children
The youngest age represents the age level when normally developing children learn ... speech disfluency especially in children learning to speak Finnish.Missing: timeline | Show results with:timeline
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[PDF] A longitudinal study of disfluencies in the speech of normal ...
More often than not, particularly among 2- and 4-year-olds, the frequency of occurrence of each disfluency type analyzed showed a downward trend from neutral ...Missing: prevalence | Show results with:prevalence
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Differential Diagnosis | Stuttering Foundation
Children with normal disfluencies between 18 months and 3 years will exhibit repetitions of sounds, syllables, and words, especially at the beginning of ...Missing: 2-4 | Show results with:2-4
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Fluency Disorder | Johns Hopkins Medicine
A person with fluency disorder has trouble speaking in a fluid or flowing way. They may repeat parts of words (stutter) or speak fast and jam words together ...Missing: residual 5-10%
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The role of inhibition in the production of disfluencies - PMC
The basic production architecture, according to Levelt (1983), is a three-stage model consisting of conceptualization, formulation, and articulation. Many ...
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On the Tip-of-the-Tongue: Neural Correlates of Increased Word ...
The tip-of-the-tongue (TOT) experience is a common and dramatic word-finding failure where a person is temporarily unable to produce a well-known word.
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fMRI and Normal Speech Production - ASHA Journals
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A review of brain circuitries involved in stuttering - PMC
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[PDF] Age-related effects on speech production: A review - MPG.PuRe
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Speech Disfluency-dependent Amygdala Activity in Adults Who Stutter
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Halting in Single Word Production: A Test of the Perceptual Loop ...
The perceptual loop theory of speech monitoring (Levelt, 1983) claims that inner and overt speech are monitored by the comprehension system.
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[PDF] Factors Affecting Speakers' Choice of Fillers in Japanese ...
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Disfluencies Revisited—Are They Speaker-Specific? - MDPI
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[PDF] Pauses and Pause Fillers in Mandarin Monologue Speech
Our analysis is based on 267 spoken monologues from a Mandarin proficiency test. We identify two basic pause fillers in Mandarin: e and en. We find that males ...
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[PDF] Investigating code-switching and disfluencies in bilingual dialogue
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Speech Disfluencies in Bilingual Lebanese Children Who Do and ...
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Non-native speaker pause patterns closely correspond to those of ...
The only clear difference between native and non-native speakers was that the latter made more pauses than the native speakers. Thus, overall, pause patterns ...
[54]
[PDF] Vocal Fillers, Contagion Effects, and, um, Overlooked Pedagogical ...
Jan 4, 2021 · Most important, do not fill the silence with “uh,” “er,” or “um.” These vocalized pauses can create negative perceptions about a speaker's.
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Filler Words and Floor Holders: The Sounds Our Thoughts Make
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Chinese - Communication - Cultural Atlas
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[57]
The Cultural Implications of Silence Around The World
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Attitudes toward stuttering of college students in the USA and China
The study revealed that Chinese college students hold more negative attitudes toward stuttering compared to their American counterparts and the global median ...
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An Exploratory Comparison of Attitudes toward Stuttering and ...
Mar 3, 2025 · Various studies have shown that collectivistic societies such as China are more likely to stigmatize disorders than individualistic societies ...
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Gender Bias Interacts With Instructor Disfluency to Negatively Affect ...
A gender bias in student evaluations of teaching was found only in the disfluent condition. Research in attributional gender bias provides insight into why we ...
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[PDF] Multicultural Stuttering and Treatment: A Cross-Cultural Analysis.
Cultural and Linguistic Diversity (CLD) Stuttering perceptions vary greatly amongst different cultures (Tellis & Tellis, 2003). Some CLD individuals may have ...<|control11|><|separator|>
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[PDF] Historical foundations of stuttering research: A brief bibliographic ...
Nov 20, 2024 · In the 19th century, clinical approaches to understanding stuttering were introduced. Research began to explore psychological factors.
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Hesitation Phenomena in Spontaneous English Speech
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Conversation Analysis - Simply Psychology
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[PDF] DISFLUENCIES IN SWITCHBOARD | SRI International
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FluencyBank Timestamped: An Updated Data Set for Disfluency ...
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[70]
Combining EEG and 3D-eye-tracking to study the prediction of ...
Dec 15, 2023 · In a proof-of-principle investigation, we combined EEG and eye-tracking to study linguistic prediction in naturalistic, virtual environments.
[71]
Multimodal explainable AI predicts upcoming speech behavior in ...
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How conceptualizing influences fluency in first and second ...
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[73]
AI Speech Model Detects Neurological Disorders With 92% Accuracy
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Stuttering: An Overview - AAFP
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Home | SpeechEasy | The World's Smallest Anti-Stuttering Device
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A cross-sectional investigation of disfluencies in typically developing ...
This study examined the language skills and the type and frequency of disfluencies in the spoken narrative production of typically developing Spanish-English ...
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Assessing and Treating Bilinguals Who Stutter
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https://www.smartspeechtherapy.com/assessing-and-treating-bilinguals-who-stutter-facts-for-bilingual-and-monolingual-slps/
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Autistic Communication Differences: A Primer - Reframing Autism
Speech dysfluencies also seem to occur often in Autistic individuals, such as stuttering and cluttering. Stuttering occurs during speech and may present as ...Missing: ongoing | Show results with:ongoing