Max Ludo, Caruso Anthony J, Gracco Vincent L
Department of Communication Sciences, University of Connecticut, Storrs, CT 06269-1085, USA.
J Speech Lang Hear Res. 2003 Feb;46(1):215-32. doi: 10.1044/1092-4388(2003/017).
This work investigated the hypothesis that neuromotor differences between individuals who stutter and individuals who do not stutter are not limited to the movements involved in speech production. Kinematic data were obtained from gender- and age-matched stuttering (n = 10) and nonstuttering (n = 10) adults during speech movements, orofacial nonspeech movements, and finger movements. All movements were performed in 4 conditions differing in sequence length and location of the target movement within the sequence. Results revealed statistically significant differences between the stuttering and nonstuttering individuals on several measures of lip and jaw closing (but not opening) movements during perceptually fluent speech. The magnitude of these differences varied across different levels of utterance length (larger differences during shorter utterances) and across different locations of the target movement within an utterance (larger differences close to the beginning). Results further revealed statistically significant differences between the stuttering and nonstuttering groups in finger flexion (but not extension) movement duration and peak velocity latency. Overall, findings suggest that differences between stuttering and nonstuttering individuals are not confined to the sensorimotor processes underlying speech production or even movements of the orofacial system in general. Rather, it appears that the groups show generalized differences in the duration of certain goal-directed movements across unrelated motor systems.
口吃者与非口吃者之间的神经运动差异并不局限于言语产生所涉及的运动。在言语运动、口面部非言语运动和手指运动过程中，从性别和年龄匹配的口吃成年人（n = 10）和非口吃成年人（n = 10）获取运动学数据。所有运动均在4种条件下进行，这些条件在序列长度和序列内目标运动的位置方面有所不同。结果显示，在感知流畅的言语过程中，口吃者与非口吃者在唇部和下颌闭合（而非张开）运动的多项指标上存在统计学上的显著差异。这些差异的大小在不同的话语长度水平上有所不同（较短话语中的差异更大），并且在话语内目标运动的不同位置上也有所不同（靠近开头的差异更大）。结果还显示，口吃组与非口吃组在手指弯曲（而非伸展）运动持续时间和峰值速度潜伏期方面存在统计学上的显著差异。总体而言，研究结果表明，口吃者与非口吃者之间的差异并不局限于言语产生或甚至一般口面部系统运动所基于的感觉运动过程。相反，似乎两组在跨不相关运动系统的某些目标导向运动的持续时间上存在普遍差异。
