ISCA Archive Interspeech 2023
ISCA Archive Interspeech 2023

Speech Breathing Behavior During Pauses in Children

Delphine Charuau, Béatrice Vaxelaire, Rudolph Sock

The aim of this paper is to investigate speech breathing behaviors in children during the realization of pauses, breathing pauses or non-breathing pauses, depending on the syntactic location of the pause and the speech task. Thus, we will be able to observe the effects of cognitive-linguistic demands on breathing patterns in children. To do so, 10 French speakers, between 8 and 11 years old, were recorded while reading and spontaneous speech. The variation of respiratory movements was measured using inductive respiratory plethysmography. The respiratory signals were synchronized with acoustic data. The results show an effect of the speech task on the duration of inhalation and, to a lesser extent, on its amplitude. 'Partial inhalations' were observed at the syntactic boundaries, suggesting that they are integrated in the child's respiratory patterns. Finally, we observed occasional cessation of rib cage closure, essentially during non-syntactic pauses.