Korcok's evidence

[DFRANK@OREGON.UOREGON.EDU (David Frank)]

With some trepidation, I write to critique Michael Korcok's recent posting 
on speech rate and debate.  In the spirit of Brian McGee's message, I intend 
to critique the grounds Korcok uses to advance his claims; I am not 
attacking his integrity, nor do I intend to belittle him.  I am working hard 
to be open to his point of view.  However, Michael, when you write "those 
who know little about debate and about as much about pedagogy ought to 
engage more in both before expressing bogosities about either" and "Mr. 
Most, read the literature instead of just trying to be clever" you tempt 
personal attacks in response.  Again, it is not a matter of being thin 
skinned or politically correct; Brian McGee is right, it is matter of being 
civil.  Let us conduct our debates on a higher plane.

I think Korock does not accurately portray the conflict.  No one I know, 
other than the Toastmasters or some of those in the Parliamentary debate, 
believe that debate exists to teach "slow speaking" or "Oratory."  Can we 
dispense of this misconception?  Rather, debate should teach rigorous habits 
of mind and eloquent habits of expression.  Most of the experimental 
literature suggests that there is a curvilinear relationship between 
speaking rates and comprehension. Most speakers speak at rates of 140-160 
words per minute.  Those who speak at rates less than 140 will bore many 
audiences.  Those that speak too quickly will tend to confuse.  

Many debaters now speak at rates over 250 words per minute, and as Rowland 
and Deatherage note: "Even the coaches of the most elite teams agree that 
many debaters speak in comprehensively and that the quality of argument 
development is often slighted in favor of quantity." This is the problem.  
And the problem leads to the sin of judge intervention, which occurs when 
judges must reconstruct the debate after the round and re-read evidence 
because they could not understand it when it was presented.

I believe most debaters can and should stay between 160 and 190 words per 
minute and win debates, and that most would be better debaters if we as 
educators insisted that articulate and comprehensible arguments are best 
made by most debaters at these speech rates.  I will offer experimental 
evidence in support of my position later.  Yet, Korcok's evidence is at 
issue here, and it does not support his claim.

First, the populations his studies rely are not representative of the debate 
population  The 1991 Raine et. al. study used 37 speech disordered children 
with slow speech aged 4 and 15 years. The other studies he cites (Roodenrys 
et. al. and others) all deal with children.  How can we make generalizations 
about academic debate on the basis of child development and speech disorder 
research?

Second, Korcok conflates a host of terms in his posting. He says that "the 
research psychologists say that speaking faster makes you smarter."  No they 
don't. The studies that he cites used memory as a dependent variable. The 
studies do demonstrate that a higher speech rate is associated with 
improvements in short-term memory.  However, the researchers do not claim, 
as does Korcok, that a faster speech rate made students smarter.  Indeed, 
Raines et al conclude that "It is still not possible to claim a causal link 
between changes in speech rate and development improvements in short term 
memory."

Third, the speech rates used as independent variables in the child 
development studies Korcok cites were no where near those heard in CEDA.  
The control groups in the studies he cites spoke at 93 words per minute.  
Again, how can we draw generalizations about CEDA speech behavior from these 
studies?

Finally, I am concerned about the claims Korcok makes.  His research does 
not support such conclusions as "the research was unanimously favorable 
about the high speed rates' ability to improve cognition and cognitive 
capacity of both the speaker and the hearer."  I believe this is a vast 
overclaim, and that in search of evidence in support of a predetermined 
ideology that celebrates speech rates over 240 wpm, Korcok may have 
shoehorned data into conclusions where it does not belong.

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