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PubMed1981

Observer agreement on disfluency and stuttering.

Groups of undergraduate and graduate student listeners identified the stutterings and disfluencies of eight adult male stutters during videotaped samples of their reading and speaking. Stuttering and disfluency loci were assigned to words or to intervals between words. The data indicated that stuttering and disfluency are not too reliable and unambiguous response classes and are not usually assigned to different, nonoverlapping behaviors. Furthermore, judgments of stuttering and disfluency were distributed similarly across words and intervals. For both undergraduate and graduate student listeners, there was relatively low unit-by-unit agreement among listeners and within the same listeners from one judgment session to another.

Adult↗
PubMed1983

Expectancy and heart rate as predictors of the speech performance of stutterers.

Three adult stutterers who displayed a preexperimental pattern of consistent expectation and occurrence of stuttering were studied in a single-subject design. Multiple linear regression analyses led to the conclusion that cognitive (signalled) expectancy was predictive of stuttering for two of the subjects. The third subject evidenced essentially no relationship between signalled expectancy and disfluent performance. For two subjects, neither mean heart rate nor heart rate variability was predictive of speech performance. For the third subject, mean heart rate was predictive but heart rate variability was not. For two subjects, there was essentially no relationship between the measured physiologic variables and cognitive expectancy. However, for the third subject both mean heart rate and heart rate variability were significantly predictive of cognitive expectancy. These results suggest that adult stutterers should not be viewed as a homogeneous group with respect to preutterance activity that is either cognitive or physiologic. The relationship between preutterance heart rate, heart rate variability, and expectancy responses and between these preutterance variables and subsequent stuttering appears to be individualistic.

Adolescent↗
PubMed1983

Effects of segment and pause manipulations on the identification of treated stutterers.

This study examined the hypothesis that reading rate affects the identification of treated stutterers. Thirty-two pairs of recorded speech samples, in which one member of the pair was a treated stutterer and the other was a nonstutterer, were available from previous research. Listeners had been able to distinguish readily between the members of these pairs. For each pair of samples, the durations of the treated stutterer's segments and pauses were adjusted to match those of the nonstutterer as closely as possible by means of a computer-based waveform editor. A test tape was prepared that included the 32 original pairs of stimuli, the 32 edited pairs, and 64 pairs of foils. Listeners were required to indicate which member of each pair was the treated stutterer. Analysis of the responses indicated that the listeners' ability to distinguish between talkers was significantly reduced for the edited stimulus pairs. The results imply that the rate used by treated stutterers must be critically evaluated if the goal of therapy is the production of perceptually "normal" speech.

Female↗
PubMed1983

Direct magnitude estimation and interval scaling of stuttering severity.

The appropriateness of direct magnitude estimation and interval scaling for assessing stuttering severity was investigated by determining whether the continuum of the stutterers' judged severity was prothetic or metathetic. As operationally defined by Stevens, prothetic continua show a curvilinear relation between magnitude estimates and interval scale values of the same set of stimuli, whereas metathetic continua show a linear relation between these scale values. The stuttering severity of 20 stutterers was scaled by three groups of 15 listeners who used interval scaling, direct magnitude estimation with standard/modulus, and direct magnitude estimation without standard/modulus. The results indicated that the two sets of direct magnitude estimation scale values were related to the interval scale values in the curvilinear fashion that is typical of prothetic continua. These findings suggest that direct magnitude estimation is preferable to interval scaling for measuring stuttering severity.

Adult↗
PubMed1984

Lower-lip EMG and displacement during bilabial disfluencies in adult stutterers.

The purpose of this study was to describe the temporal patterns and spectral characteristics of antagonist lip muscle EMG and lip displacement during bilabial disfluencies in adult stutterers. Selective EMG recordings were obtained in five adult stutterers of mentalis and depressor labii inferior motor units (MENT and DLI) that were activated in a reciprocal manner during fluent speech. During disfluencies (N = 91) these same motor units were activated primarily in a reciprocal manner or DLI was not activated. These findings are not consistent with previous reports that stutterers' disfluencies involve cocontraction and overall increases in the activation levels of antagonist muscles. Spectral analysis of bilabial disfluencies revealed peaks at 5-9 Hz in the MENT EMG spectra of the five subjects and at 5-6 Hz in the displacement spectra of two subjects. A refinement in the classification of stutterers' disfluencies is suggested on the basis of individual differences in lip EMG and displacement spectra, and the mechanisms of stuttering tremor are discussed.

Adult↗
PubMed1984

Eye movements of stuttering and nonstuttering children during silent reading.

During the silent reading of a 320-word passage, the eye movements of 22 grade school stutterers and 22 nonstutterers were recorded by means of a computer-controlled eye-marker. The recordings were made as a means of determining if the eye movements of the two groups differed and if the differences suggested that the young stutterers showed evidence of word-specific expectancy. Frame-by-frame analysis of the recordings revealed that the stuttering children displayed significantly more eye fixations and eye regressions than the nonstuttering children. The correlations among the different types of eye measures also varied between the subject groups. The differences observed were present despite the fact that the reading level of the two groups was age appropriate and the subjects sampled did not differ significantly in either reading errors or comprehension. These findings are like those previously found when stuttering and nonstuttering adults were similarly tested. They imply that expectancy is not the response province of older stutterers.

Child↗
PubMed1986

Studies in stuttering as a prosodic disturbance.

In two experiments, various aspects of prosody in adult male stutterers and nonstutterers were studied. The results showed that stutterers did not speak with a generally reduced pitch pattern, they were able to place sentence accent correctly but had difficulty executing this prosodic feature, stuttering episodes were located mainly on stressed syllables, a fixed timing pattern of speech enhanced fluency, and the intervals between stressed syllables were more variable in the speech of stutterers, even in symptom-free passages, than in the speech of nonstutterers. Results support the conclusion that stuttering, seen on the symptomatic level of disfluencies produced, is a prosodic disturbance.

Adult↗
PubMed1986

Electroglottographic observations of young stutterers' fluency.

The purpose of this study was to compare the laryngeal behavior associated with the perceptually fluent speech of young stutterers (n = 8) to that of their normally fluent peers (n = 8). Laryngeal behavior during fluent productions of the initial and final consonants and medial vowels in each of the words Pete, bake, face, and veal was observed by means of an electroglottograph (EGG). The recorded EGG signal was electrically processed to obtain a measure of vocal fold abduction from the "open quotient" (glottal open time divided by glottal period) during consonant-vowel (CV) and vowel-consonant (VC) transitions, as well as during the central portion of the vowel. In each case, a Typical pattern for the abduction measure that was consistent with the underlying production mechanism for the sound sequence was found for the normally fluent subjects. The normally fluent children exhibited significantly more Typical patterns during the CV/CV transitions than did the stuttering youngsters, with 72% of the total transition samples from normally fluent youngsters being Typical versus 42% for the young stutterers. Though some Atypical patterns for the vowels were noted, most of the normally fluent (94%) and stuttering (84%) youngsters' total vowel samples were Typical. These findings suggest that some young stutterers tend to have difficulty stabilizing and controlling laryngeal gestures even during speech judged fluent by trained listeners, particularly at those points in the utterance where these youngsters must move between sound segments.

Child, Preschool↗
PubMed1987

Formant frequencies of stuttered and fluent vowels.

The formant frequencies of 15 adult stutterers' fluent and disfluent vowels and the formant frequencies of stutterers' and nonstutterers' fluent vowels were compared in an F1-F2 vowel space and in a normalized F1-F2 vowel space. The results indicated that differences in formant frequencies observed between the stutterers' and nonstutterers' vowels can be accounted for by differences among the vocal tract dimensions of the talkers. In addition, no differences were found between the formant frequencies of the fluent and disfluent vowels produced by the stutterers. The overall pattern of these results indicates that, contrary to recent reports (Klich & May, 1982), stutterers do not exhibit significantly greater vowel centralization than nonstutterers.

Adult↗
PubMed1988

Difference of susceptibility to delayed auditory feedback between stutterers and nonstutterers.

Forty stutterers and 40 nonstutterers were tested for susceptibility to delayed auditory feedback (DAF) while reading passages under amplified delay conditions. Susceptibility to DAF of stutterers was significantly higher than that of nonstutterers. In the nonstuttering group, men were more susceptible to DAF than women, but in the stuttering group, there was no significant difference between sexes. There was also no significant difference in DAF susceptibility between stuttering men and nonstuttering men. Nonstuttering women were least susceptible to DAF. A Susceptibility Index (SI) was found to discriminate speaker sensitivity to DAF and was interpreted to suggest that stutterers rely on auditory feedback for speech control more than nonstutterers.

Adult↗
PubMed1988

Constancy of relative timing for stutterers and nonstutterers.

Fifteen stutterers and 15 nonstutterers read a 120-word passage five times in succession. From the stutterers' readings, sentences were selected for analysis that were produced fluently in the first and the fifth reading. The sentences surrounding the target utterance in the first reading, however, contained instances of stuttering although the surrounding sentences in the fifth reading were fluent. The same utterances were selected from the first and fifth readings produced by the nonstutterers, but the surrounding sentences were fluent for both samples. Four separate relative timing ratios were defined by measuring an acoustic period and an acoustic latency and dividing the period by the latency. Analysis of the ratios revealed no significant differences between the groups in spite of the rate changes that occurred between the readings. The data indicate that not all aspects of a stutterer's speech are affected by the stuttering, and that relative timing may be a critical parameter for the production of fluent utterances.

Adolescent↗
PubMed1989

Comparison of period-by-period fundamental frequency of stutterers and nonstutterers over repeated utterances.

The fundamental frequency (f phi) of the first five periods in the acoustic wave form of vowels following stop consonant productions and the f phi of a period approximately 100 ms into the vowel were analyzed in the repeated fluent utterances of 10 nonstutterers and 10 stutterers both pre- and posttherapy. Group data indicate that the nonstutterers and stutterers showed similar f phi diminution patterns in vowels immediately following stop consonants. Additionally, the stutterers were not significantly different from the nonstutterers in their ability to achieve a stable f phi over repeated utterances. These results are discussed with respect to a previous analysis of the present data (Sacco & Metz, 1986) in which it was found that stutterers were significantly more variable than nonstutterers in their ability to achieve a stable f phi over repeated utterances. It is suggested that stutterings in the immediate vicinity of otherwise fluently produced words may influence certain production characteristics of those words.

Adult↗
PubMed1990

Autonomic correlates of stuttering and speech assessed in a range of experimental tasks.

Electrodermal activity, peripheral blood flow, and heart rate were recorded from 19 stutterers and 19 normal speakers during performance of jaw movements, a strenuous breath-holding task, reading, and spontaneous speech. The tasks were selected to produce a range of autonomic activation and thus help scale autonomic activation for speech relative to other motor behaviors. Speaking was associated with relatively large increases in autonomic activity in both stutterers and normal speakers. There were no differences between the two groups of speakers, suggesting that the stutterers did not have abnormally high levels of autonomic activation in speech. Within the group of stutterers, the more extreme increases in arousal (specifically increases in measures reflecting sympathetic arousal) were correlated with the occurrence and increased severity of disfluent speech. Significant correlations were found for the intervals prior to, during, and after speech. Although significantly correlated with disfluency, measures of autonomic arousal accounted for small percentages of the variances of fluency and severity. The results are consistent with the hypothesis that sympathetic arousal accompanies the breakdowns in speech motor processes characteristic of stuttering. Mechanisms linking autonomic nervous system functions and somatic sensorimotor processes involved in speech production are discussed.

Adolescent↗
PubMed1991

Speech-associated attitudes of stuttering and nonstuttering children.

A Dutch version of the Communication Attitude Test (Brutten, 1985) was used to assess the speech-associated attitudes of 70 stuttering and 271 nonstuttering Belgian children of elementary and middle school age. The results showed that the stuttering children evidenced significantly more negative attitudes toward speech than did their nonstuttering peers. This difference was present from age 7, the youngest age group studied, on up. Moreover, a significant group x age interaction revealed that the speech-related attitudes of the stuttering children became more negative with increasing age. In contrast, those of the nonstuttering children became less negative after age 9. These findings suggest that, in the course of fluency therapy for youngsters who stutter, negative attitudes toward speech should be addressed. This is especially true if, as with adults who stutter, negative attitudes are predictive of therapeutic failure.

Adolescent↗
PubMed1991

A theory of neuropsycholinguistic function in stuttering.

A theory of neurolinguistic function is proposed to explain fluency and the production of stuttered and nonstuttered speech disruptions. Central to the theory is the idea that speech involves linguistic and paralinguistic components, each of which is processed by different neural systems that converge on a common output system. Fluent speech requires that these components be integrated in synchrony. When they are dyssynchronous, the result can be either nonstuttered disfluency or stuttering, depending on time pressure. Time pressure is defined as the speaker's need to begin, continue, or accelerate an utterance. Nonstuttered disfluency results when the linguistic and paralinguistic components are dyssynchronous and the speaker is not under time pressure. Stuttering results when the speaker is under time pressure and is relatively unaware of the cause of dyssynchrony. Both of these factors are necessary for the identification of the phenomenon of stuttering. Stuttering is defined as disruption of speech that is experienced by the speaker as a loss of control. The theory presented here accounts for both the disruption and the experienced loss of control.

Biological Evolution↗
PubMed1992

Stuttered and normal speech events in early childhood: the validity of a behavioral data language.

A set of 200 utterances from stuttering and normally speaking children aged 2-4 years was obtained. Each utterance contained a disfluency. A group of 5 sophisticated listeners assigned one of Johnson's eight disfluency categories to each of the 200 utterances. These clinicians showed poor agreement in the categories they assigned. Subsequently, the 200 disfluencies were presented to a group of generalist clinician listeners and a group of unsophisticated listeners, who were asked to judge whether each disfluency was "stuttering" or "normal." The disfluencies judged with high agreement to be "stuttering" and the disfluencies judged with high agreement to be "normal" were not categorically distinguished by the disfluency categories assigned previously by the sophisticated listeners. Further, judged presence of various disfluency categories accounted for only a small portion of the variance in numbers of "stuttering" judgments assigned to disfluencies. It is concluded that it is justifiable to question the validity of the data language used by researchers to describe stuttered and normal speech in early childhood. Several implications of this conclusion are discussed.

Child Language↗
PubMed1992

Speech naturalness and prolonged-speech treatments for stuttering: further variables and data.

It is well known that unusual speech quality may result from stuttering treatments that are based on prolonged speech. However, empirical information concerning the speech quality associated with those treatments is lacking. The present study was designed to contribute such empirical information. Results indicated that speech quality assessments of posttreatment clients, using Martin, Haroldson, and Triden's (1984) speech naturalness scale, gave similar results regardless of whether they were based on monologues or conversations. The speech quality of those clients remained stable at the conclusion of their treatment program. Further, there was a significant, positive correlation between pretreatment speech measures and measures of speech naturalness made after the establishment of stutter-free speech. The subjects whose pretreatment stuttering was the most severe had posttreatment speech naturalness scores that were more than two scale values worse than the subjects whose pretreatment stuttering was the least severe. Speech naturalness scale scores are presented for nonstutterers and posttreatment stutterers and these data are compared with existing findings.

Adolescent↗
PubMed1992

Time-interval analysis of interjudge and intrajudge agreement for stuttering event judgments.

In response to the recognized need for a valid and reliable way to measure stuttering, this study investigates a measurement methodology based on time-interval analyses of stuttering event judgments. Three groups of judges, differing in stuttering judgment experience, identified stuttering events in 12 repeated presentations of five 1-min speech samples. Fixed time intervals ranging from 0.2 sec to 7.0 sec were then superimposed on the event judgments by a data analysis program. Inter- and intrajudge interval-by-interval agreement, and agreement for total numbers of intervals containing stuttering event judgments, were calculated for each judge group. Results showed that agreement was superior among more experienced judges and in longer interval lengths. Agreement varied across speech samples but not across the repeated judgment opportunities. Agreement was maximized at greater than chance levels for an interval of approximately 3.0 sec, but even this best agreement did not exceed a mean of approximately 60% for experienced judges.

Adolescent↗