Clinical measurement of rate of reading and discourse in young adults

Abstract

The present study investigated discourse (connected speech) rates and utterance rates in a group of normal-speaking subjects. Sample sizes of about 100 words (140 syllables), 120 words (165 syllables), and 112 words (143 syllables) were found to be sufficient to obtain valid estimation of rate of reading, talking, and describing, respectively. The slow speakers in the group had rates of 174–186 words per minute (WPM) or 241–259 syllables per minute (SPM), 136–144 WPM (183–204 SPM), 133–147 WPM (171–181 SPM) during reading, talking, and picture description, respectively. These rates may be appropriate guidelines for rate control therapies of stuttering. If individual utterances rather than connected speech are used for rate control, 3.35–3.67 words per second (WPS) or 4.54–5.07 syllables per second (SPS), 2.28–3.09 WPS (3.36–4.19 SPS), 2.61–3.12 WPS (3.27–3.96 SPS), falling between the 25th and 50th percentile values, appear to be suitable for reading, talking, and picture description tasks respectively. In the present study, the rates of reading and discourse (talking about self and picture description) were comparable whether measured in WPM or SPM and in males and females.