Speech breathing: variable but individual over time and according to limb movements

Abstract

Breathing is variable but also highly individual. Since the 1980s, evidence of a ventilatory personality has been observed in different physiological studies. This original term refers to within-speaker consistency in breathing characteristics across days or even years. Speech breathing is a specific way to control ventilation while supporting speech planning and phonation constraints. It is highly variable between speakers but also for the same speaker, depending on utterance properties, bodily actions, and the context of an interaction. Can we yet still observe consistency over time in speakers' breathing profiles despite these variations? We addressed this question by analyzing the breathing profiles of 25 native speakers of German performing a narrative task on 2 days under different limb movement conditions. The individuality of breathing profiles over conditions and days was assessed by adopting methods used in physiological studies that investigated a ventilatory personality. Our results suggest that speakerspecific breathing profiles in a narrative task are maintained over days and that they stay consistent despite light physical activity. These results are discussed with a focus on better understanding what speech breathing individuality is, how it can be assessed, and the types of research perspectives that this concept opens up.

Leg movements affect speech intensity

“…The effect of limb acceleration on speech acoustics was investigated based on the recording of speech, breathing, and limb motion data during a narrative task in different conditions of limb movements (see Ref. 8 , for more details). The data were recorded at the Leibniz-Zentrum Allgemeine Sprachwissenschaft (ZAS).…”

“…Note that breathing was synchronously monitored using an Inductotrace inductance plethysmography system (see Ref. 8 ). However, we did not analyze breathing for the current purpose: since the time window analyzed is around 400 ms around the physical impulse, it is impossible to know whether the potential bumps we could find in breathing kinematics at the time of occurrence of the physical impulses come from a shift of the belts due to the cycling movement or from a real effect of the impulse on the thoracic cage.…”

“…To ensure equal balance between order of presentation of the stories, order of the conditions, and condition-story associations, we used pseudo-randomization (see Ref. 8 ). With 24 possibilities for condition orders and 24 potential story-condition associations, 576 participants would have been required for complete randomization which was not feasible.…”

“…When speech and limb movements co-occur, breathing becomes a shared resource shaped by the constraints of the two systems. Hence, breathing is increasingly studied as a central aspect of the relationship between speech and a range of limb movements such as manual gestures accompanying speech in communication ( 3 , 6 – 8 ); arm movements for object manipulation ( 9 , 10 ); or leg movements for locomotion ( 11 , 12 ).…”

Effects of verbal tasks with varying difficulty on real-time respiratory airflow during speech generation in healthy young adults

“…In spite of it, the link between definite cognitive demands and breathing during speech remains unclear. Previous research has demonstrated that speech generation entails strong adaptations in breathing patterns related to linguistic and cognitive requirements ( Serre et al, 2021 ). For instance, important differences in respiratory outcomes have been reported in healthy individuals required to read short text passages versus executing spontaneous speech during free talking ( Winkworth et al, 1994 , 1995 ; Mitchell et al, 1996 ; Wang et al, 2010 ).…”