LETTERS
TO
THE
EDITOR
COMMENTS ON "SPEECH FLUENCY FLUCTUATIONS DURING THE MENSTRUAL CYCLE" Howard Giles and Jennifer A. Giles
University of Bristol, England Silverman and Zimmer (1975) in a recent article in ]SHR claimed to present evidence to demonstrate that women produce more speech disfluencies at premenstruation than ovulation. They attribute this finding to certain biological and emotional changes women undergo during their menstrual cycles. Although the authors never blandly stated it as such, the implication of these results will be seen by many readers as showing that women have certain deficiencies in their speech at regular intervals which are biologically determined. Possibly many others will make inferences from these data as supporting other, perhaps more serious, cognitive deficiencies. In fact, a number of our colleagues after reading this paper did make such inferences. This is a particularly grave situation for women when it is considered that similar biological arguments have been taken by some to justify the unequal treatment of women especially in the occupational sphere (Hole and Levine, 1973). It seems necessary to examine Silverman's and Zimmer's paper very carefully in the light of the very serious "political" arguments it may be used to support, particularly when it is our contention that the research has methodological and statistical problems, and the theoretical framework is unnecessarily biased. The authors report the following significant statistical differences in their data. The mean total frequency of speech disfluency for the subjects was 7.20 (per 100 words spoken) at premenstruation and 6.00 at ovulation, while on one of their seven specific disfluency measures (revision-incomplete phrase), the mean frequencies were 1.81 and 1.44, respectively. Roughly translated into reality, this means that within a
five-minute speaking period, a woman on average is producing a total of 36 speech disfluencies at premenstruation as against 30 at ovulation, and a total of nine revision-incomplete ]~hrases under the former as against seven under the latter condition. Although these differences are reported as statistically significant, to all intents and purposes they are probably socially meaningless. For instance, would a woman be subjectively aware of such very subtle changes over this time period? Would even her conversants be able to detect them in her speech? These seem important empirical questions in view of the data. It should also be pointed out that these "differences" were elicited at the supposed emotional extremes of a woman's monthly cycle, and so when compared with her speech behavior at other times in the month they may even be less impressive. Certainly a control sample of speech should have been elicited at another time interval in the month. In analyzing these data, the authors used a one-tailed test since they claimed that "there was no reason to believe that women would produce more disfluencies at ovulation than at premenstruation." There is, however, such evidence. Sherman (1971) in her review of the experimental work on psychobiological changes accompanying the menstrual cycle has pointed out that "symptoms may occur in the middle of the month, at the time of ovulation or during the menstrual period, as well as immediately before the period." In other words, two-tailed tests were more appropriate in this instance and when applied to the data the above differences are of course not at all statistically significant. The authors also claim that only two out 187
Downloaded From: https://jslhr.pubs.asha.org/ by a Univ of York-England User on 03/24/2018 Terms of Use: https://pubs.asha.org/ss/rights_and_permissions.aspx
of their 12 female subjects "had surmised the exact purpose of the experiment.'" It seems unlikely that subiects who are reuired to take their temperatures and have eir speech recorded in a sound-treated booth in a communication disorders laboratory at definite times of the month explicitly related to the menstrual cycle would not have at least guessed that some aspect of their communicative ability was being compared on these occasions. Unfortunately, no data were provided on the nature of the surmised hypotheses of the remaining 10 subjects. Moreover, because of the severely negative cultural expectations associated with menstruation (a point to which we shall return) it would not have been surprising to learn that the experimental procedure made them far more anxious about their speech behavior at the predicted time of the month than normally was the case. (A similar methodological problem arises with regard to the authors' earlier study on four women stutterers and menstrual cycles [Silverman, Zimmer, and Silverman, 1974]). Furthermore, it would be dubious to generalize from these findings since little demographic data is presented about the 12 subiects and we have no idea why and how they were recruited for the experiment. Silverman and Zimmer suggest only the following causal interpretation of their results-that certain hormonal changes found to accompany the menstrual cycle can cause increases in a woman's anxiety level which will affect the magnitude of speech disfluencies she emits. Admittedly, there is a body of evidence to suggest such a psychogenic linkage between biological changes in the menstrual cycle and certain cognitive functionings. Nevertheless, many other views have been expressed in the literature which would equally well have fitted the data presented by Silverman and Zimmer but which were not even considered. One of the authors they actually cited (Benedeck, 1959) clearly stated in a subsequent paper that the effects of this so-called psychogenic linkage were not so great in normal women as in the neurotic, sexually frustrated women that she had studied in her own research. She considered the hormonal influence as "a shadowy background present, but easily obscured by other factors." Furthermore, Wickham (1958) in a well-controlled study of 4000 service women found only a slight and nonsignificant .depression of test scores with the menstrual period. As mentioned, other theories have been suggested for the men-
strual changes. Seward ( 1946 ) has attributed any observed effect to the cultural expectation of invalidism. Ehrenreich and English (1974) also share the belief that much of the female debilitation at this time is due to cultural factors of shame and inferiority associated with menstruation. Levitt and Lubin (1967) demonstrated a reasonable relationship between personality and attitude towards menstruation and reported symptomatology. Silverman's and Zimmer's theoretical discussion of their results simply in terms of biological determinism are then open to a number of important alternative interpretations. Yet in any case, their finding that women's speech at premenstruation is more disfluent than at ovulation seems to be methodologically biased, statistically dubious, and perhaps socially meaningless. If anything, in our iudgment this research shows that the menstrual cycle has a very limited effect on women's speech at least on this behavioral level. REFERENCES BENEDEK, T., Sexual function in women and their disturbance. In S. Arieti (Ed.), American Handbook o~ Psychiatry. New York: Basic Books, 726-748 (1959). EHlaENREICH, B., and ENGLISH, D., Com-
plaints and Disorders: The Sexual Politics of Sickness. London: Compendium (1974).
HOLE, j., and LEVINE, E., The Rebirth of Feminism. New York: Quadrangle Books (1973). LEVrrT, E. E., and LvnI~, B., Some personality factors associated with menstrual eoml~laints and menstrual attitude. I. psycnosom. Res., 11,267-70 (1967). SEWARD, G. H., Sex and the Social Order. New York: McGraw-Hill (1946). SHERMAN, J. A., On the Psychology of Women: A Survey of Empirical Studies. Springfield, I11.: Charles C Thomas (1971). SILVEaMAN, E., and ZrxtMER, C. H., Speech fuency fluctuations during the menstrual cycle. 1. Speech Hearing Res., 18, 202-206 (1975).
SILVER/vfAN, E., ZIMJVIER, C., and SILVER.XIAN, F., Variability in stutterers' speech disfluency: The menstrual cycle. Percept. Mot. Skills, 38, 1037-1038 (1974). WICr_qAM, M., The effects of the menstrual cycle on test performance. Br. I. Psychol., 49, 34-41 (1958). Received September 30, 1975. Accepted October 21, 1975.
188 Journal of Speech and Hearing Research
Downloaded From: https://jslhr.pubs.asha.org/ by a Univ of York-England User on 03/24/2018 Terms of Use: https://pubs.asha.org/ss/rights_and_permissions.aspx
19
187-188
1976
TO
THE
EDITOR
COMMENTS ON "SPEECH FLUENCY FLUCTUATIONS DURING THE MENSTRUAL CYCLE" Howard Giles and Jennifer A. Giles
University of Bristol, England Silverman and Zimmer (1975) in a recent article in ]SHR claimed to present evidence to demonstrate that women produce more speech disfluencies at premenstruation than ovulation. They attribute this finding to certain biological and emotional changes women undergo during their menstrual cycles. Although the authors never blandly stated it as such, the implication of these results will be seen by many readers as showing that women have certain deficiencies in their speech at regular intervals which are biologically determined. Possibly many others will make inferences from these data as supporting other, perhaps more serious, cognitive deficiencies. In fact, a number of our colleagues after reading this paper did make such inferences. This is a particularly grave situation for women when it is considered that similar biological arguments have been taken by some to justify the unequal treatment of women especially in the occupational sphere (Hole and Levine, 1973). It seems necessary to examine Silverman's and Zimmer's paper very carefully in the light of the very serious "political" arguments it may be used to support, particularly when it is our contention that the research has methodological and statistical problems, and the theoretical framework is unnecessarily biased. The authors report the following significant statistical differences in their data. The mean total frequency of speech disfluency for the subjects was 7.20 (per 100 words spoken) at premenstruation and 6.00 at ovulation, while on one of their seven specific disfluency measures (revision-incomplete phrase), the mean frequencies were 1.81 and 1.44, respectively. Roughly translated into reality, this means that within a
five-minute speaking period, a woman on average is producing a total of 36 speech disfluencies at premenstruation as against 30 at ovulation, and a total of nine revision-incomplete ]~hrases under the former as against seven under the latter condition. Although these differences are reported as statistically significant, to all intents and purposes they are probably socially meaningless. For instance, would a woman be subjectively aware of such very subtle changes over this time period? Would even her conversants be able to detect them in her speech? These seem important empirical questions in view of the data. It should also be pointed out that these "differences" were elicited at the supposed emotional extremes of a woman's monthly cycle, and so when compared with her speech behavior at other times in the month they may even be less impressive. Certainly a control sample of speech should have been elicited at another time interval in the month. In analyzing these data, the authors used a one-tailed test since they claimed that "there was no reason to believe that women would produce more disfluencies at ovulation than at premenstruation." There is, however, such evidence. Sherman (1971) in her review of the experimental work on psychobiological changes accompanying the menstrual cycle has pointed out that "symptoms may occur in the middle of the month, at the time of ovulation or during the menstrual period, as well as immediately before the period." In other words, two-tailed tests were more appropriate in this instance and when applied to the data the above differences are of course not at all statistically significant. The authors also claim that only two out 187
Downloaded From: https://jslhr.pubs.asha.org/ by a Univ of York-England User on 03/24/2018 Terms of Use: https://pubs.asha.org/ss/rights_and_permissions.aspx
of their 12 female subjects "had surmised the exact purpose of the experiment.'" It seems unlikely that subiects who are reuired to take their temperatures and have eir speech recorded in a sound-treated booth in a communication disorders laboratory at definite times of the month explicitly related to the menstrual cycle would not have at least guessed that some aspect of their communicative ability was being compared on these occasions. Unfortunately, no data were provided on the nature of the surmised hypotheses of the remaining 10 subjects. Moreover, because of the severely negative cultural expectations associated with menstruation (a point to which we shall return) it would not have been surprising to learn that the experimental procedure made them far more anxious about their speech behavior at the predicted time of the month than normally was the case. (A similar methodological problem arises with regard to the authors' earlier study on four women stutterers and menstrual cycles [Silverman, Zimmer, and Silverman, 1974]). Furthermore, it would be dubious to generalize from these findings since little demographic data is presented about the 12 subiects and we have no idea why and how they were recruited for the experiment. Silverman and Zimmer suggest only the following causal interpretation of their results-that certain hormonal changes found to accompany the menstrual cycle can cause increases in a woman's anxiety level which will affect the magnitude of speech disfluencies she emits. Admittedly, there is a body of evidence to suggest such a psychogenic linkage between biological changes in the menstrual cycle and certain cognitive functionings. Nevertheless, many other views have been expressed in the literature which would equally well have fitted the data presented by Silverman and Zimmer but which were not even considered. One of the authors they actually cited (Benedeck, 1959) clearly stated in a subsequent paper that the effects of this so-called psychogenic linkage were not so great in normal women as in the neurotic, sexually frustrated women that she had studied in her own research. She considered the hormonal influence as "a shadowy background present, but easily obscured by other factors." Furthermore, Wickham (1958) in a well-controlled study of 4000 service women found only a slight and nonsignificant .depression of test scores with the menstrual period. As mentioned, other theories have been suggested for the men-
strual changes. Seward ( 1946 ) has attributed any observed effect to the cultural expectation of invalidism. Ehrenreich and English (1974) also share the belief that much of the female debilitation at this time is due to cultural factors of shame and inferiority associated with menstruation. Levitt and Lubin (1967) demonstrated a reasonable relationship between personality and attitude towards menstruation and reported symptomatology. Silverman's and Zimmer's theoretical discussion of their results simply in terms of biological determinism are then open to a number of important alternative interpretations. Yet in any case, their finding that women's speech at premenstruation is more disfluent than at ovulation seems to be methodologically biased, statistically dubious, and perhaps socially meaningless. If anything, in our iudgment this research shows that the menstrual cycle has a very limited effect on women's speech at least on this behavioral level. REFERENCES BENEDEK, T., Sexual function in women and their disturbance. In S. Arieti (Ed.), American Handbook o~ Psychiatry. New York: Basic Books, 726-748 (1959). EHlaENREICH, B., and ENGLISH, D., Com-
plaints and Disorders: The Sexual Politics of Sickness. London: Compendium (1974).
HOLE, j., and LEVINE, E., The Rebirth of Feminism. New York: Quadrangle Books (1973). LEVrrT, E. E., and LvnI~, B., Some personality factors associated with menstrual eoml~laints and menstrual attitude. I. psycnosom. Res., 11,267-70 (1967). SEWARD, G. H., Sex and the Social Order. New York: McGraw-Hill (1946). SHERMAN, J. A., On the Psychology of Women: A Survey of Empirical Studies. Springfield, I11.: Charles C Thomas (1971). SILVEaMAN, E., and ZrxtMER, C. H., Speech fuency fluctuations during the menstrual cycle. 1. Speech Hearing Res., 18, 202-206 (1975).
SILVER/vfAN, E., ZIMJVIER, C., and SILVER.XIAN, F., Variability in stutterers' speech disfluency: The menstrual cycle. Percept. Mot. Skills, 38, 1037-1038 (1974). WICr_qAM, M., The effects of the menstrual cycle on test performance. Br. I. Psychol., 49, 34-41 (1958). Received September 30, 1975. Accepted October 21, 1975.
188 Journal of Speech and Hearing Research
Downloaded From: https://jslhr.pubs.asha.org/ by a Univ of York-England User on 03/24/2018 Terms of Use: https://pubs.asha.org/ss/rights_and_permissions.aspx
19
187-188
1976
