answering Church

["michael korcok" <mk48@cornell.edu>]

HOWDY!!!

    good to interact with you again, Professor Church.

    not to put you on the spot or anything, but many of the newer folks on
the list may not know that you are the co-author of a respected debate text
and a recent President of CEDA.  (he's pretty cool, too)

    now that that is out of the way, what the heck are you talking about? ;)
I hope you don't mind if I nibble on a few things which look like they might
be tasty bait while you're figuring out the e-mail thing (took me some time
too).  Let's see... a link turn, you say...

Perhaps you believe that the Friedman evidence claimed that 300 wpm was the
upper bound on verbal processing speed, and that studies show that debaters
sometimes exceed even that rate, which means that speedy debate goes beyond
the optimally efficient speech rate?  Well...
     Firstly, Friedman doesn't say that 250 wpm is some sort of optimal
   speech processing rate for everyone.  He says, and the evidence is used
   to claim that, the AVERAGE, NORMAL, EVERYDAY person listens optimally at
   that rate.  The evidence doesn't say that 300 wpm is some sort of
   ceiling, either.
     Secondly, optimal speech processing rates vary from person to person.
   For the average mature adult, the studies indicate that comprehension
   increases until about 250 wpm before dropping again. Gade et al note for
   mechanically compressed speech (which is probably LESS understandable
   than equivalent debater rates) in Human Learning in 1984 (v3) that:
      "The performance of all non-incentive control groups had significantly
      deteriorated when compressed speech was presented at rates faster than
      241 wpm (1.85 times faster than normal)...  Foulke found that the
      comprehension scores of college students untrained in listening to
      compressed speech did not significantly decline until word rate was
      increased above 250 wpm.  Foulke's results are similar to those
      obtained for the non-incentive control groups in our study." (p 106)
   But, these are just average folk.  Kids, for example, have low but
   rapidly increasing optimal rates of speech processing.  Thus, Professor
   Robert Kail of Purdue's Psychology Department writes in Developmental
   Psychology last year (v28,n5) that:
      "Speeded performance improves substantially throughout childhood and
      modestly during adolescence.  Compared with young adults, 4 and 5
      year-olds typically respond three times more slowly, 8-year olds
      respond twice as slowly, and 11-year olds respond 50% more slowly.
      This pattern of developmental change is found for a spectrum of
      perceptual and cognitive tasks, which has led to the suggestion that a
      common mechanism may be responsible for age-related change in speeded
      performance.  That is, some central mechanism, which changes gradually
      with age, may limit the rate with which children can process
      information." (p 899)
   And also, older adults show a decreasing optimal rate of speech
   processing.  (I DO suspect that this result is part of what underlies the
   particular antipathy with which some of the older coaches in our activity
   view speedy debate -- I also think that these results DO say some very
   important things about judge adaptation and debater responsibility to
   audiences, but perhaps we can discuss that later).  Professors Stine,
   Wingfield, and Poon observe in Psychology and Aging in 1986 (v1, n4)
   that:
      "Because it is frequently found that operations in working memory are
      performed more slowly by the older adult (Cerella, Poon, & Williams,
      1980; Salthouse, 1982), it might be expected that the older adult
      would have difficulty in comprehending speech, which routinely
      requires rapid processing....  It is often reported that the elderly
      adult is less proficient at processing spoken language (Cohen, 1979;
      Cohen & Faulkner, 1981; Petros, Tabor, Cooney, & Chabot, 1983).  This
      seems to be especially true when inferential processes and extraction
      of gist is required (Cohen, 1979).  It has been suggested (Salthouse,
      1980, 1982; Cerella et al., 1980) that the effects of slowing are
      exaggerated in tasks requiring more cognitive operations to be
      performed, inasmuch as the chance of errors among interdependent
      processes increases." (p303)
   Anyway, my point here is that the literature is clear that there is great
   variation in persons' optimal rate of speech processing.
     Thirdly, individuals' optimal rates of speech INCREASE when they are
   exposed to faster speaking rates.  In other words, there is no ceiling:
   a person's optimal rate can be raised, and sometimes dramatically so.
   Professor Gade and his colleagues at the U.S. Army Research Institute
   for the Behavioral and Social Sciences reported in Human Learning in 1984
   (v3) that:
     "The performance of those trained using incentive methods did not drop
     until the groups were presented with rates faster than 286 wpm.
     Clearly, the incentive groups are much better at comprehending
     compressed speech than are non-incentive groups who behave like
     untrained listeners." (p 106)
   Also, more recent studies have even resulted in formulas which predict
   optimal and preferred rates of speech processing.  These formulae
   illustrate the phenomenon that exposure to and training with rapid speech
   increases persons' facility with more rapid speech.  Professors Gade and
   Mills reported in Perceptual and Motor Skills in 1989 (v68) that:
     "Furthermore, other studies have shown that subjects can listen to
     compressed speech at rates in excess of two times the normal rate with
     no appreciable loss in comprehension when they have some experience
     and/or training with compressed speech...  Exposure to compressed
     speech may not only affect the rate listeners select to listen to
     speech but may also influence the preferred listening rate.  Foulke
     (1966) showed that blind college students who regularly listen to
     compressed speech prefer a speech rate of 275 wpm, which is a rate well
     above normal speech rate...  Thus, exposure to compressed speech over
     time seems to increase both the rate at which people can comprehend
     compressed speech as well as their preferred listening rate." (p531)
   These research results jibe well with the reports of debaters, judges,
   and coaches who claim to enjoy and have facility with speedy debate.  We
   should give them presumption when they claim to understand and even
   prefer speedy rounds.  Obviously many are not entirely truthful and some
   are fooling themselves, but no doubt many are able handle the buzz.
     Finally, I'm not sure how quickly some debaters speak.  Measurement of
   that sort of thing is inexact.  Each individual debater introduces
   complexities like slurring, over-articulation, clarity, and so on which
   would no doubt confound detailed examination of optimal natural speaking
   rates.  All we can really do is get a general idea of some of the
   parameters about this issue.

Well, I'm exhausted.  I hope you had something like this in mind when you
referred to a link turn in the Friedman evidence.  If not, I got to present
some pretty neat results from the research literature:  let me know when you
get a chance.

so long for now,
:( mike korcok :)

for those of you who are interested in either the original Friedman evidence
or would like to hunt for Professor Church's "link turn", here it is again:

Herb Friedman, staffwriter, Creative Computing, July 1983, p.122:

     ... the human brain can assimilate information much faster than
   information can be fed in.  In fact, when listening to speech, the brain
   works at about one-half to one-third of capacity and it gets bored, often
   causing the listener to lose track of what is going on.  Experiments have
   shown that the brain works most efficiently if the information rate
   through the ears - via speech - is the "average" reading rate, which is
   about 200-300 wpm, yet the average rate of speech is in the neighborhood
   of 100-150 wpm.  In short, the brain works at about one half of its
   assimilation capacity when listening to speech;  whether it is a
   classroom lecture, an educational cassette tape, or even a TV show.
   Experiments have also shown that the brain tends to wander when working
   well under its capacity, so the listener often ends up tuning out
   altogether.  Speed increases understanding.  Comprehension is not only
   increased if we speed up the rate of speech, but we can assimilate two or
   three times the amount of information in the same time."

     In case the "turn" is between the claim and the card, I believe that
the evidence was offered as a teaser example of the literature which
supports the claim that speedy debate speeds thought.  Comprehension,
connections between ideas, and depth of thought all increase as the speed
of verbal processing increases. I think those were the only claims I made.

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