People with cluttering (PWC) often receive feedback, such as "Slow down!", even so, this fluency disorder cannot be cured by only slowing down the speakers' speech rate. When PWC accelerate their speech rate, language planning difficulties and word structure errors might occur, which might result in breakdowns in fluency and/or intelligibility. In the present paper characteristics of the frequency of disfluencies were examined in four different speech tasks from deliberately slow to maximum speech rate, whether speech rate changes have effects on cluttered speech. Twenty participants of this investigation were individuals suspected of cluttering with ages between 20 and 50 years of both genders. The results show that PWC are able to change, not only their speech rate but articulatory rate as well. Moreover, disfluencies were produced the most frequently in the speech task of maximum speech rate, where PWC do not have enough time for speech planning. The research provides empirical, measured data for a better insight into the nature of cluttering. Understanding the correlation between speech rate and disfluencies in cluttered speech is fundamental to improve the diagnosis of cluttering.

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Purpose: The aim of this study was to explore the characteristics of disfluency clusters in cluttering in conversation depending on the relationship of communication partners. Method: Ten-minute speech samples of conversations between people with cluttering (PWC) and people who do not clutter (PWNC) were analyzed for disfluencies. For each sample taken, participants were paired with either friends or unknown partners. PWC were also paired with PWNC and with each other. The influence of the different conversational partners on the type and frequency of disfluency was examined. Results: In all conversation samples, PWC exhibited 2.4 times more complex disfluencies than PWNC. In addition, the frequency of complex disfluencies was influenced by the independent variables of PWC/PWNC and relationship of conversational partner. More complex disfluencies were produced by PWC in the conversations with a PWNC friend and with an unknown PWC as compared to conversations with an unknown PWNC and a PWC friend. Conclusions: Results confirm clinical observations that cluttering disfluencies may increase with more familiar conversational partners. However, atypical speech may also increase severity of symptoms. Findings also provide objective information about cluttering in relatively naturalistic situations.