Abstract
The present paper investigates whether and to what extent speaking rate and phrasing affect functional comprehension of a read text. Three consistently comparable groups were presented with three different versions of a naturally read text.
The versions were acquired naturally, i.e., without speech signal modification, in three ways: normal speech rate and phrasing corresponding to the logical and syntactic structure of the text, high rate with preserved logical phrasing, and finally natural speech rate with distorted phrasing. The three recordings were presented to three comparable groups of respondents in a responsive manner.
Their task was to determine the truth of the statements related to the text. It turned out that an increase in speech rate affected comprehension minimally, while chaotic phrasing caused a decrease in comprehension of up to 33%.