What is Speech Disfluency?
In communication and speech recognition technology, speech disfluency is the occurrence of unplanned breaks or fillers that disrupt the smooth flow of speech. These are natural in everyday conversations and often signal hesitation, thinking, or emphasis. For AI systems, handling disfluencies is critical to improving transcription accuracy and natural language understanding.
Functions of Speech Disfluency
- Thinking Time: Gives speakers a moment to process their thoughts before continuing.
- Signaling Uncertainty: Marks hesitation or lack of confidence in what’s being said.
- Organizing Speech: Helps speakers structure complex ideas during real-time conversations.
- Human Interaction Cues: Shows listeners that the speaker hasn’t finished, preventing interruptions.
- Impact on AI Systems: In speech analytics and natural language processing, managing disfluencies is key to accurate intent recognition and smoother AI-driven interactions.
Conclusion
While often seen as imperfections, speech disfluencies play an important role in human communication. For contact centers and AI models, effectively identifying and filtering disfluencies ensures clearer transcripts, better customer understanding, and more natural conversational AI.
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