The Perception of Dutch Fluency: a qualitative examination of fluency ratings on native and nonnative speech

In fluency research that contains rating experiments, it is often the case that either a) overall proficiency is examined, and participants are free to rate fluency intuitively; or b) participants are told to base their judgments on several utterance fluency characteristics, since the researcher studiesfluency in the narrow sense. In this study, I examine whether there are more speech factors that fall under the concept of fluency in the narrow sense than only the fluency characteristics that the participants are given prior to a rating task. Qualitative research into the perception of fluency on Dutch native and nonnative speech gave 17 different categories that participants take into account when judging spontaneous speech. Then, two groups of participants were juxtaposed: one group that had to judge fluency based on four utterance fluency characteristics (explicit group); and one group that only received a definition of cognitive fluency and was free to base their judgments on...Show moreIn fluency research that contains rating experiments, it is often the case that either a) overall proficiency is examined, and participants are free to rate fluency intuitively; or b) participants are told to base their judgments on several utterance fluency characteristics, since the researcher studiesfluency in the narrow sense. In this study, I examine whether there are more speech factors that fall under the concept of fluency in the narrow sense than only the fluency characteristics that the participants are given prior to a rating task. Qualitative research into the perception of fluency on Dutch native and nonnative speech gave 17 different categories that participants take into account when judging spontaneous speech. Then, two groups of participants were juxtaposed: one group that had to judge fluency based on four utterance fluency characteristics (explicit group); and one group that only received a definition of cognitive fluency and was free to base their judgments on their own interpretation of this definition (implicit group). Results indicate that the implicit group was less likely to let disfluencies influence them negatively, but was more inclined to unconsciously judge overall proficiency rather than fluency in the narrow sense. Additionally, both groups showed a sensitivity for pause distribution that helped them to determine the speaker’s ease of lexical retrieval. I conclude that intonation and planning efficiency are essential components of fluency in the narrow sense, and should therefore be used in the instructions for future rating experiments.Show less

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The Perception of Dutch Fluency: a qualitative examination of fluency ratings on native and nonnative speech