Talking while Chewing: Speaker Response to Natural Perturbation of Speech

This study looks at how the conflicting goals of chewing and speech production are reconciled by examining the acoustic and articulatory output of talking while chewing. We consider chewing to be a type of perturbation with regard to speech production, but with some important differences. Ultrasound and acoustic measurements were made while participants chewed gum and produced various utterances containing the sounds /s/, /ʃ/, and /r/. Results show a great deal of individual variation in articulation and acoustics between speakers, but consistent productions and maintenance of relative acoustic distances within speakers. Although chewing interfered with speech production, and this interference manifested itself in a variety of ways across speakers, the objectives of speech production were indirectly achieved within the constraints and variability introduced by individual chewing strategies.