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PubMed2002

Visuoperceptual and visuomotor deficits in developmental stutterers: an exploratory study.

Although the cause of stuttering is unknown, there is strong evidence for it being a neuromotor disorder characterised by an abnormality of higher control encompassing not only speech but other motor systems. The aim of this exploratory study was to look for the presence of non-speech/language deficits--in particular, visuomotor and visuoperceptual deficits--in persons who stutter. Twelve moderate to severe developmental stutterers were compared with a group of fluent speakers, matched for age and sex, on a range of computerized sensory-motor tasks. These tasks covered various aspects of visuomotor function--ballistic movement, dynamic steadiness, and several types of tracking--and visuoperceptual function--acuity, static perception, and dynamic perception. A novel technique was used to remove the visuospatial component from tracking performance. Stutterers had slower reaction times, less accurate random tracking, and impaired dynamic visual perception. Severity of stuttering correlated with reaction time and dynamic perception. Removal of the visuoperceptual component from tracking performance indicated that the impaired tracking in the stutterers was predominantly due to reduced dynamic perception. This is the first study to provide preliminary evidence for the presence of non-linguistic visuoperceptual and upper-limb visuomotor tracking deficits in people with moderate to severe stuttering. These findings support a neurogenic aetiology for stuttering and are compatible with evidence of an overactive dopamine system in stutterers.

Adult↗
PubMed2002

Characteristics of speech disfluency and stuttering behaviors in 3- and 4-year-old children.

The purpose of this investigation was to quantitatively and qualitatively characterize speech disfluencies exhibited by 3- and 4-year-old children who do (CWS, N = 36) and do not (CWNS, N = 36) stutter. Five measures of speech disfluency (e.g., percentage of total, other, and stuttering-like disfluencies, mean number of repetition units, and weighted SLD measure) were used in attempts to differentiate CWS from CWNS. Similar measures of stuttering (e.g., percentage of stuttering-like disfluencies consisting of disrhythmic phonations) were used to characterize speech disfluencies in 3- and 4-year-old CWS in relation to time since stuttering onset (TSO). It was hypothesized that such measures of speech disfluency should significantly differ between CWS and CWNS, as well as 3- versus 4-year-old CWS in relation to TSO. Results indicated that 4 out of the 5 dependent measures significantly differed between CWS and CWNS, and within the CWS group there was a significant relationship between TSO and the percentage of stuttering-like disfluencies when the effects of chronological age were partialled out of the regression analyses. Furthermore, 4-year-old CWS exhibited a moderate correlation between TSO and the percentage of stuttering-like disfluencies consisting of disrhythmic phonations, whereas 3-year-old CWS exhibited no such relationship between these two variables. Findings were taken to suggest that certain measures of speech disfluency appreciably differentiate CWS from CWNS and that 4-year-old CWS exhibit changes in nonreiterative forms of stuttering as a function of time since stuttering onset.

Age Factors↗
PubMed2002

Epidemiology of stuttering in the community across the entire life span.

A randomized and stratified investigation was conducted into the epidemiology of stuttering in the community across the entire life span. Persons from households in the state of New South Wales, Australia, were asked to participate in a telephone interview. Consenting persons were given a brief introduction to the research, and details were requested concerning the number and age of the persons living in the household at the time of the interview. Interviewees were then given a description of stuttering. Based on this description, they were asked if any person living in their household stuttered (prevalence). If they answered "yes," a number of corroborative questions were asked, and permission was requested to tape over the telephone the speech of the person who stutters. Confirmation of stuttering was based on (a) a positive detection of stuttering from the tape and (b) an affirmative answer to at least one of the corroborative questions supporting the diagnosis. Results showed that the prevalence of stuttering over the whole population was 0.72%, with higher prevalence rates in younger children (1.4-1.44) and lowest rates in adolescence (0.53). Male-to-female ratios ranged from 2.3:1 in younger children to 4:1 in adolescence, with a ratio of 2.3:1 across all ages. The household member being interviewed was also asked whether anyone in the household had ever stuttered. If the answer was "yes," the same corroborative questions were asked. These data, along with the prevalence data, provided an estimate of the incidence or risk of stuttering, which was found to range from 2.1% in adults (21-50 years) to 2.8% in younger children (2-5 years) and 3.4% in older children (6-10 years). Implications of these results are discussed.

Adolescent↗
PubMed2005

Lexical priming in picture naming of young children who do and do not stutter.

The purpose of this investigation was to assess the influence of lexical/semantic priming on the speech reaction time of young children who do and do not stutter during a picture-naming task. Participants were 23 children who stutter, age-matched (+/-4 months) to 23 children who do not stutter, ranging in age from 3;0 (years;months) to 5;11. Procedures involved a computer-assisted picture-naming task, during which each participant was presented with the same set of 28 pictures in each of 3 different conditions: (a) no-prime condition, in which no auditory stimulus was presented before picture display; (b) related-prime condition, in which a word, semantically related to the target picture, was presented auditorily 700 ms before picture display; and (c) unrelated-prime condition, in which a semantically unrelated word was presented auditorily 700 ms before picture display. Results indicated that when compared with a no-prime condition, presentation of semantically related words before the picture-naming response led to shorter or faster speech reaction times for children who do not stutter, but for children who stutter, it led to longer or slower speech reaction times. Moreover, children who do not stutter and who had higher receptive vocabulary scores exhibited faster speech reaction times and a greater semantic priming effect, whereas no such relationships were found for children who stutter. Findings were taken to suggest that children who stutter may exhibit subtle difficulties with lexical encoding and that this difficulty with speech-language planning may be one variable that contributes to childhood stuttering.

Age Factors↗
PubMed1980

Communication attitudes of women who stutter.

This study sought to determine the appropriateness of the Andrews and Cutler (1974) modification of Erickson's (1969) S-scale to women who stutter. This tool, apparently valuable both in the description of stuttering symptomatology and in the prediction of therapy outcome, had been developed to differentiate male stutterers from male nonstutterers. The modification of the S-scale was administered to 10 female stutterers, 10 female nonstutterers, and 10 male stutterers. S-scores were found not only to differentiate female stutterers from female nonstutterers but also female stutterers from male stutterers. For both female and male stutterers, attitudes toward communication were independent of frequency of disfluency. Clinical implications of these findings are considered.

Adult↗
PubMed1975

Reduction of stuttering frequency using analog electromyographic feedback.

Three stutterers were taught to reduce resting muscle activity by using analog electromyographic feedback from four sites over different muscle groups. They were then trained to reduce muscle activity prior to uttering selected sentences. A functional analysis was performed to determine the relationship between the decrease in stuttering frequency on initial phonemes and the reduction of electrical activity at each muscle site. Subjects demonstrated different responses to training. One subject's greatest decrease in stuttering frequency was associated with muscle activity training at a lip site. A second subject's greatest decrease in stuttering was associated with training at a laryngeal site. A third subject's greatest decreases in stuttering were with both lip and laryngeal site training. Following these demonstrations that stuttering could be controlled with electromyographic feedback, a practical management program was designed for a fourth stutterer. Feedback training to reduce electromyographic activity when paired with speech resulted in elimination of stuttering in two monitored situations, conversations and telephone calls. Probes indicated the stuttering continued to be markedly reduced in all situations nine months after treatment.

Action Potentials↗
PubMed1976

Traits attributed to stuttering and normally fluent males.

To determine if a stereotype of the "typical stutterer" exists and to identify possible differences in that sterotype due to exposure to stuttering, seven groups of subjects having a wide range of possible exposure to stutterers rated four hypothetical concepts (typical eight-year-old male, typical eight-year-old male stutterer, typical adult male, and typical adult male stutterer) on 25 scales arranged in a semantic differential format. These bipolar scales were derived from words previously judged by speech clinicians as descriptive of stutterers and antonyms of those words. It was concluded that a strong stereotype of a stutterer's personal characteristics exists, that the stereotype is predominantly unfavorable, that the stereotype is essentially unaffected by amount of exposure to actual stutterers, and that the traits attributed to boys and men who stutter are similar. Some implications of the study are discussed.

Adult↗
PubMed1976

Factors contributing to the reduction of stuttering during singing.

This study was conducted to determine if the reduction of stuttering typically observed during singing is associated with altered vocalization or the familiarity of the melody and lyrics of the song sung by the stutterer, or both. Subjects were eight adult male stutterers. Prior to testing, each of these individuals demonstrated that he knew the melody and lyrics of a well-known song from memory. Subsequently, subjects were asked to read these lyrics aloud and then sing them. Next, subjects had to read aloud and then sing a set of unfamiliar lyrics to the conventional melody of the same song. The stutterers' reading and singing performances were audiotaped. The dependent measures of utterance duration and stuttering frequency were extracted from the tapes. Results showed that subjects' utterance durations were significantly longer during singing than reading. The main effects of singing and familiarity were both associated with significant reductions in stuttering frequency. The greatest decrement in stuttering occurred in the condition where subjects sang the familiar melody and lyrics. These findings were interpreted to mean that changes in vocalization cannot account for all of the decrease in stuttering that occurs during singing. During song, the familiarity of the melody and lyrics being produced may also affect stuttering frequency.

Adolescent↗
PubMed1977

Effect of vicarious punishment on stuttering frequency.

This investigation explored the effect of vicarious response-contingent stimulation on the frequency of stuttering. Twenty adult stutterers spoke for 20 minutes, then observed a speaker on a videotape for 10 minutes, and then spoke for an additional 20 minutes. In one condition the speaker on the videotape was a severe stutterer who experienced a dramatic reduction in stuttering under a contingent time-out procedure. In a second condition, the videotape speaker was a severe stutterer who received no experimental manipulations. In the third condition, the videotape speaker was a normal talker who received no experimental manipulations. All subjects participated in all three conditions. Twenty of the stutterers experienced a significant decrease in stuttering as a result of watching the videotape model who received contingent time-out. The subjects did not exhibit significant changes in stuttering after watching the severe stutterer who received no treatment or the normal talker.

Adult↗
PubMed1982

Speech-language pathologists' connotations of stuttering.

In a study to elicit clinicians' connotative meanings regarding stuttering, 206 practicing speech-language pathologists participated. A semantic differential technique was utilized for gathering responses to seven concepts in the domain of stuttering on five meaning dimensions. The background variables of clinicians' age, academic degree, clinical experience, ASHA certification, and academic coursework in stuttering were also measured. Results indicated that increasing age, higher degrees, more coursework, or more clinical experience did not produce more positive connotations among speech-language pathologists. Those holding the Certificate of Clinical Competence in Speech-Language Pathology showed more positive connotative responses than the noncertified group. Speech-language pathologists do respond differently on meaning dimensions for concepts in the domain of stuttering. The concept stuttering was evaluated more positively than all others, whereas the concept stuttering therapy was evaluated more negatively than any of the other six. Concepts which referred to individuals who stutter were viewed in a similar negative way regardless of age or sex. The subjects did not respond to the concept parents of stutters as negatively as they did toward those who stutter.

Adult↗
PubMed1985

Laryngeal behavior during stuttering: a further study.

The purpose of this study was to provide detailed, objective descriptions of stutterers' laryngeal behavior during instances of stuttering within conversational speech. Subjects were 11 adult stutterers who produced stutterings (sound prolongations and sound/syllable repetitions) while their laryngeal behaviors were observed by means of a flexible fiber-optic nasolaryngoscope (fiberscope). Laryngeal behaviors during 86 of the 11 stutterers' stutterings were categorized as adducted, intermediate, or abducted. Results indicate that during sound prolongations the vocal folds were more likely to be adducted and less variable in their movement than during sound/syllable repetitions. Results further indicated that the voicing characteristics of the stuttered sound (voiceless vs. voiced) and the type of stuttering (sound prolongation vs. sound/syllable repetition) interactively influenced laryngeal behavior. It is hypothesized that a complex interaction among the laryngeal, articulatory, and respiratory systems contribute to the occurrence of the inappropriate abductory and/or adductory laryngeal behavior which characterizes prolonged or repeated (stuttered) speech segments.

Adolescent↗
PubMed1991

Preparation time and response complexity effects on stutterers' and nonstutterers' acoustic LRT.

Nonstutterers', mild stutterers', and severe stutterers' acoustic laryngeal reaction times (LRTs) were recorded for isolated vowels and nonpropositional VCV responses in different stimulus conditions governing response preparation. In all stimulus-response conditions severe stutterers produced the longest LRTs, followed in turn by mild stutterers and nonstutterers. The three groups significantly differed from one another in most conditions, but the magnitude of difference between mild and severe stutterers was notably greater than the difference between mild stutterers and nonstutterers. LRT changes as a function of stimulus condition showed that, in general, nonstutterers were best able to use a preparation-facilitating stimulus condition to reduce LRT, and severe stutterers least able to do so. LRT changes as a function of response complexity showed that only nonstutterers produced statistically significant within-group differences. Patterns of LRT change as a combined function of group, stimulus condition, and response type suggest a complex relationship between stutterer severity, preparation time, and type of response complexity. Results illustrate aspects of Goldberg's (1985) model of preparation processes, and support hypotheses that stutterer subgroups show differential preparation deficits along with high motor initiation variability.

Adult↗
PubMed1992

The relationship between communication attitude, anxiety, and depression in stutterers and nonstutterers.

People who stutter are frequently viewed as more anxious than nonstutterers and as being depressed. Further, a strong and pervasive stereotype is held by nonstutterers that people who stutter are guarded, nervous, and tense. This study examined self-perceptions of general state and trait anxiety, depression, and communication attitude in matched groups of stutterers and nonstutterers. Results refute the assertion that people who stutter are more anxious or depressed than those who do not. Anxiety and depression are not related to self-ratings of stuttering severity. Communication attitude is negative for this group of people who stutter and becomes increasingly negative as self-ratings of stuttering become more severe. People who stutter, grouped by severity rating, differed in the strength of the relation between measures of communication attitude, anxiety, and depression. Findings suggest that the anxiety of people who stutter is restricted to their attitude towards communication situations and that it is a rational response to negative communication experiences.

Adolescent↗
PubMed1994

Word familiarity, syllabic stress pattern, and stuttering.

The correspondence of stuttering and linguistic characteristics of utterances has led to speculations that a source factor for stutter events is a speaker's inadequate formulation of the speech code. In this study, the effects of word frequency and syllabic stress pattern on stuttering frequency were evaluated using specially designed sentences read orally by 10 adult stutterers and 10 adult nonstutterers. Results revealed statistically significant differences in stuttering frequency between sentences with low and high frequency words, but not between sentences with regular and irregular syllabic stress patterns. The significant rank order correlation between stutterers' word recognition vocabulary scores and amount of stuttering on sentences with high versus low frequency words affirmed that word familiarity, not simply word prominence, is an important factor contributing to the word frequency effect. The outcomes are discussed in relation to current psycholinguistic theories of stuttering, proposing that word access and phonological encoding difficulties could be a source factor that underlies the occurrence of stutter events.

Adult↗
PubMed1996

Establishing the validity of recovery from stuttering without formal treatment.

There is no empirical basis for determining goals for stuttering treatment. One approach that might resolve this issue is to systematically investigate persons who claim to have recovered from stuttering without the assistance of treatment. However, critical methodological and conceptual issues must be overcome first in order to assure these persons had a valid stuttering problem and that their recovery was independent of treatment. This study examined a validation procedure for solving these issues based on the combination of two methods: independent verification and self-reports. Forty-two subjects participated: 14 adults who recovered from stuttering without assistance, 14 adults with persistent stuttering, and 14 adults who were normally fluent speakers. For the independent verification, a Speech Behavior Checklist was administered to 42 individuals familiar with the recovered subjects' past speech and the other subjects' current speech. Results indicated that persons who knew the recovered subjects when they used to stutter recalled speech behaviors consistent with subjects who still stuttered, but not the same as speech behaviors consistent with subjects who never stuttered. These findings were supported by an objective analysis of the recovered subjects' descriptions of their past stuttering. Furthermore, a content analysis of subjects' self-reports indicated that recovery was independent of treatment.

Adult↗
PubMed1997

Language production abilities of children whose stuttering persisted or recovered.

This study evaluated the language production capabilities of 32 young children whose stuttering followed divergent paths: one group whose stuttering persisted, one group who stuttered relatively briefly and recovered, and one group who stuttered for a longer period prior to recovery. Three indices of language production (mean length of utterance, number of different words, and number of total words) were obtained from spontaneous language samples. Measures of language production were calculated from samples collected at an initial visit near stuttering onset and at a one-year follow-up visit. Results revealed that the majority of the children who stuttered performed within the average range on these measures of language production. One child, a child whose stuttering persisted, consistently performed below the average range on all measures. Comparison of the three groups revealed greater variability, as well as atypical patterns of development, in the language production skills of children whose stuttering persisted. These findings suggest that although language production deficits do not appear to be widespread in children who stutter, examination of individual patterns of performance is central to clarifying the developmental relationship between language proficiency and the production of fluent speech.

Age of Onset↗
PubMed1998

Phonological words and stuttering on function words.

Stuttering on function words was examined in 51 people who stutter. The people who stutter were subdivided into young (2 to 6 years), middle (6 to 9 years), and older (9 to 12 years) child groups; teenagers (13 to 18 years); and adults (20 to 40 years). As reported by previous researchers, children up to about age 9 stuttered more on function words (pronouns, articles, prepositions, conjunctions, auxiliary verbs), whereas older people tended to stutter more on content words (nouns, main verbs, adverbs, adjectives). Function words in early positions in utterances, again as reported elsewhere, were more likely to be stuttered than function words at later positions in an utterance. This was most apparent for the younger groups of speakers. For the remaining analyses, utterances were segmented into phonological words on the basis of Selkirk's work (1984). Stuttering rate was higher when function words occurred in early phonological word positions than other phonological word positions whether the phonological word appeared in initial position in an utterance or not. Stuttering rate was highly dependent on whether the function word occurred before or after the single content word allowed in Selkirk's (1984) phonological words. This applied, once again, whether the phonological word was utterance-initial or not. It is argued that stuttering of function words before their content word in phonological words in young speakers is used as a delaying tactic when the forthcoming content word is not prepared for articulation.

Child↗
PubMed1999

Effects of monitoring condition and frequency-altered feedback on stuttering frequency.

The purpose of the study was to examine stuttering frequency during speaking conditions that are believed to mitigate stuttering frequency both with normal nonaltered auditory feedback (NAF) and a known fluency-enhancing feedback. Specifically, stuttering frequency was examined as a function of three monitoring conditions under NAF and frequency-altered feedback (FAF): no monitoring (i.e., speaking alone, in the absence of audio and visual recording), audiovisual monitoring (i.e., speaking alone with audiovisual recording), and audiovisual monitoring with observers (i.e., speaking with audiovisual recording in the presence of two observers). Seven adults and one adolescent who stutter served as participants. Stuttering frequency was differentially affected across monitoring conditions under each auditory feedback condition (p = .027). Post hoc analyses revealed no significant difference in stuttering frequency between the two conditions in the absence of the observers (i.e., no monitoring vs. audiovisual monitoring) under NAF (p = .45). There was, however, a significant difference in stuttering frequency for the no-monitoring and audiovisual-monitoring conditions relative to the audiovisual-monitoring-with-observers condition (p = .0002). There was no statistically significant difference in stuttering frequency across monitoring conditions under FAF (p > .05). The findings are consistent with the notion that during NAF stuttering frequency varies as a function of hierarchical socio-environmental conditions in which inanimate monitoring conditions constitute one entity. Such a relationship does not exist during FAF.

Adult↗