Acoustic Analysis of Speech of Stutterers : Before and After Adaptation

Adaptation refers to the decline in stuttering frequency that accompanies consecutive oral readings of the same material. Only few studies have been carried out on adaptation effect in stutterers and no such studies in Indian context have been attempted. A standard Kannada passage was read five times by twenty four male stutterers in the age range of 14 to 30 years. These speech samples were analyzed to extract temporal and spectral parameters. The results of the study showed that 87.5% stutterers showed adaptation effect and mean percentage of adaptation noted was 47.51%. Significant differences were noted for vowel duration, word duration, articulation rate, burst duration, speaking fundamental frequency and first formant frequency between fluent words in reading 1 and 5.