Anxiety and speaking in people who stutter: An investigation using the emotional Stroop task

People with anxiety disorders show an attentional bias towards threat or negative emotion words. This exploratory study examined whether people who stutter (PWS), who can be anxious when speaking, show similar bias and whether reactions to threat words also influence speech motor planning and execution. Comparisons were made between 31 PWS and 31 fluent controls in a modified emotional Stroop task where, depending on a visual cue, participants named the colour of threat and neutral words at either a normal or fast articulation rate. In a manual version of the same task participants pressed the corresponding colour button with either a long or short duration. PWS but not controls were slower to respond to threat words than neutral words, however, this emotionality effect was only evident for verbal responding. Emotionality did not interact with speech rate, but the size of the emotionality effect among PWS did correlate with frequency of stuttering. Results suggest PWS show an attentional bias to threat words similar to that found in people with anxiety disorder. In addition, this bias appears to be contingent on engaging the speech pro-duction system as a response modality. No evidence was found to indicate that emotional reactivity during the Stroop task constrains or destabilises, perhaps via arousal mechanisms, speech motor adjustment or execution for PWS

Early development in infants at risk of childhood apraxia of speech: A longitudinal investigation.

This study examined early features of the heritable phenotype associated with childhood apraxia-of-speech (CAS). We compared speech and language development from 9 to 24 months of age in eight children at familial risk of CAS to that of eight infants with no such family history. At-risk infants scored lower on expressive language, speech development, and fine motor skills. Results support a broad, heritable verbal trait deficit for children at risk of CAS. Single case analyses showed poor prelinguistic speech development can dissociate from emerging receptive language and conceptualization skills, consistent with a deficit originating in speech motor control

The locus of naming difficulties in children with dyslexia: evidence of inefficient phonological encoding

Twenty-four children with dyslexia (aged 7;7 to 12;1) and twenty-four age-matched controls named pictures aloud while hearing nonsense syllables either phonologically related (i.e., part of) or unrelated to the target picture name. Compared with controls, dyslexics had slower reaction times overall and, for low frequency items, the degree of facilitation from phonologically related sound segments relative to unrelated segments was proportionally greater. Within the dyslexic group, phonological facilitation was greater and picture naming speed slower for poorer compared with better readers. Phonological facilitation and picture naming speed was unrelated to reading ability in the normal readers. The results suggest that phonological encoding during speech production is less efficient in some children with dyslexia and that hearing part of the target word strongly facilitates this process. The findings are consistent with the hypothesis that dyslexia can arise from poorly specified output phonological representations

Facilitating use of speech recognition software for people with disabilities: A comparison of three treatments

This study examined the relative benefit of three interventions (i.e. physiological, behavioural, and pragmatic) designed to facilitate speech recognition software use. Participants were 15 adults with dysarthria associated with a variety of aetiological conditions, including cerebral palsy, Parkinson\u27s disease, and motor neuron disease. Results suggested no clear dysarthric profile that would preclude at least some degree of speech recognition system use. Participants demonstrated systematic improvement in their dictation rates regardless of treatment order. The physiological treatment produced significantly higher dictation rates overall than the behavioural—but not the pragmatic—treatment. This finding suggests that improvement was not simply a function of software training, at least for the physiological treatment. This conclusion also was supported by changes in the participants\u27 speech production during a post‐treatment assessment

Developmental changes in pharyngeal swallowing acoustics: a comparison of adults and children

© 2017 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group. This study examined developmental differences in the acoustics of pharyngeal swallowing. Thirty-one young children (M = 4.5 years) and 29 adults (M = 22.5 years) were recorded swallowing thin liquid and puree boluses. In comparison with adults, children showed longer total swallow sound duration and duration to peak intensity, as well as greater variability in the duration to peak intensity and mean of the averaged spectrum in Hz. Thin and puree boluses differed in measures of duration, intensity and frequency of the averaged sound spectrum, although these effects did not interact with age. The increased variability in swallowing observed in children paralleled that found in acoustic measures of vowel formants, although speech and swallowing acoustic measures were uncorrelated. Using Formant 2 frequency as a proxy measure of vocal tract length, the age differences in swallowing acoustics appear to be independent of physical size, although associations between duration to peak intensity and pharyngeal size warrant further investigation. These findings suggest acoustic measures of swallowing are sensitive to developmental status, possibly reflecting ongoing refinement of the pharyngeal swallow across childhood, and support continued research into the use of digital cervical auscultation as a tool to assess the efficiency and stability of the swallowing neuromuscular control system in children and adults

Verbal repetition skill in language impaired children: Evidence of inefficient lexical processing?

Speeded verbal repetition of spoken words in simple and primed conditions was used to examine lexical processing deficits in children with specific language impairment (SLI). During simple verbal repetition, children with SLI (n=18) were slower at repeating abstract verbs compared to concrete verbs. This same effect was not observed for nouns. Age matched typically developing (TD) children (n=18) showed no effect of concreteness for either verbs or nouns. During primed verbal repetition the children heard prime-target word pairs (e.g., lion-tiger) on each trial. Semantically related primes speeded verbal repetition for the TD but not SLI group, suggesting inefficient spreading activation within lexical semantics for children with SLI. Phonologically related primes (e.g., tiny) slowed verbal repetition of the target (e.g., tiger) in both groups, suggesting children with SLI were similar to their age-matched peers in lexical phonological competition. The results are generally supportive of graded deficits in lexical processing skill in SLI consistent with connectionist accounts, and approaches to therapy that combine semantic and phonological dimensions at the word level

Speeded verbal responding in adults who stutter: Are there deficits in linguistic encoding?

Linguistic encoding deficits in people who stutter (PWS, n = 18) were investigated using auditory priming during picture naming and word vs. non-word comparisons during choice and simple verbal reaction time (RT) tasks. During picture naming, PWS did not differ significantly from normally fluent speakers (n = 18) in the magnitude of inhibition of RT from semantically related primes and the magnitude of facilitation from phonologically related primes. PWS also did not differ from controls in the degree to which words were faster than non-words during choice RT, although PWS were slower overall than controls. Simple RT showed no difference between groups, or between words and non-words, suggesting differences in speech initiation time do not explain the choice RT results. The findings are consistent with PWS not being deficient in the time course of lexical activation and selection, phonological encoding, and phonetic encoding. Potential deficits underlying slow choice RTs outside of linguistic encoding are discussed. Educational objectives: The reader will be able to (1) describe possible relationships between linguistic encoding processes and speech motor control difficulties in people who stutter; (2) explain the role of lexical priming tasks during speech production in evaluating the efficiency of linguistic encoding; (3) describe the different levels of processing that may be involved in slow verbal responding by people who stutter, and identify which levels could be involved based on the findings of the present stud

Investigating factors related to the effects of time-out on stuttering in adults.

Investigating factors related to the effects of time-out on stuttering in adultsAuthors: Diane E. Franklin a; Catherine L. Taylor b; Neville W. Hennessey a; Janet M. Beilby aAffiliations: a School of Psychology, Curtin University of Technology, Western Australia b Centre for Developmental Health, Curtin University of Technology, and Telethon Institute for Child Health Research, Western AustraliaDOI: 10.1080/13682820701449893Publication Frequency: 6 issues per yearPublished in: journal International Journal of Language & Communication DisordersFirst Published on: 11 December 2007Subjects: Rehabilitation; Speech Therapy;Formats available: HTML (English) : PDF (English)Article Requests: Order Reprints : Request Permissions Purchase Article: US$35.00 - buy now buy now add to cart buy now [ show other buying options ] purchase type customer type online access payment method price Single Article Purchase Any 3 days credit card US$35.00 buy now buy now add to cart add to cart Issue Purchase Any permanent credit card US$133.29 buy now buy now add to cart add to cart If you would like to pay in any other currency please see the purchasing help pages for more information. * Sign In Sign In * Online Sample Online SampleAbstractBackground: Response-contingent time-out has been shown to be an effective technique for enhancing fluency in people who stutter. However, the factors that determine individual responsiveness to time-out are not well understood.Aims: The study investigated the effectiveness of using response-contingent time-out to reduce stuttering frequency in adults who stutter. In addition, it investigated the predictive value of participants' stutter severity, age, previous treatment history, and type of stutter on the responsiveness to time-out conditioning.Methods & Procedures: Sixty people who stutter participated in the study. Half were exposed to time-out following each moment of stuttering over a 40-min period, the remaining participants acted as controls.Outcomes & Results: Results showed that individuals who stutter are highly responsive to time-out, and that the participants with a more severe stutter responded better than those with a mild stutter. To a lesser degree, previous treatment and speech rate also influenced treatment success. Age and type of stutter did not, although the proportion of repetition types of stutters increased over the experiment conditions, with prolongations and blocks decreasing, for the treatment group.Conclusions: This simple operant conditioning treatment method is effective in reducing stuttering. Individuals respond to time-out regardless of their age, type of stutter, stuttering severity or treatment history, thus it is a treatment methodology potentially suitable for all clients. This study investigated initial responsiveness to time-out; therefore, further research is necessary to determine the durability of fluency over time.Keywords: Stuttering; Stammering; time-out; fluency; disorders; adults; operant conditioningview references (36