Purdue University, West Lafayette, IN, USA.
J Speech Lang Hear Res. 2013 Feb;56(1):89-102. doi: 10.1044/1092-4388(2012/11-0184). Epub 2012 Apr 5.
To investigate the potential effects of increased sentence length and syntactic complexity on the speech motor control of children who stutter (CWS).
Participants repeated sentences of varied length and syntactic complexity. Kinematic measures of articulatory coordination variability and movement duration during perceptually fluent speech were analyzed for 16 CWS and 16 typically developing children (CTD) between 4 and 6 years of age. Behavioral data from a larger pool of children were also examined.
For both groups, articulatory coordination variability increased with sentence length. For syntactically simple sentences, CWS had higher coordination variability than CTD. There was no group difference in coordination variability for complex sentences. Coordination variability increased significantly with complexity for CTD, whereas that of CWS remained at the high level demonstrated for simple sentences. There was a trend for higher overall coordination variability in CWS compared with CTD. For both groups, movement duration was greater for syntactically complex, as compared with simple, sentences.
Results indicate more variable speech motor coordination during fluent speech production in many CWS as compared with CTD. Disproportionate effects of length and complexity on coordination variability and duration were not found for CWS. Considerable individual differences in performance were observed.
研究句子长度和句法复杂度增加对口吃儿童（CWS）言语运动控制的潜在影响。
参与者重复长度和句法复杂度不同的句子。对 16 名 CWS 和 16 名典型发展儿童（CTD）在感知流畅言语期间的发音协同运动变异性和运动持续时间进行了运动学测量。还检查了来自更大儿童群体的行为数据。
对于两个组，发音协同运动变异性随句子长度增加而增加。对于句法简单的句子，CWS 的协调性变异性高于 CTD。对于复杂句子，两组之间的协调性变异性没有差异。对于 CTD，协调性变异性随着复杂性的增加而显著增加，而 CWS 的协调性变异性保持在简单句子所表现出的高水平。与 CTD 相比，CWS 的整体协调性变异性呈上升趋势。对于两个组，句法复杂的句子比简单的句子运动持续时间更长。
结果表明，与 CTD 相比，许多 CWS 在流畅言语产生过程中发音运动协调性变化更大。CWS 并没有发现长度和复杂性对协调性变异性和持续时间的不成比例影响。观察到相当大的个体差异。
