Audiology and Speech Pathology, University of Tennessee, Knoxville, TN, USA.
Int J Lang Commun Disord. 2010 Mar-Apr;45(2):133-44. doi: 10.3109/13682820902763951.
People who stutter are often acutely aware that their speech disruptions, halted communication, and aberrant struggle behaviours evoke reactions in communication partners. Considering that eye gaze behaviours have emotional, cognitive, and pragmatic overtones for communicative interactions and that previous studies have indicated increased physiological arousal in listeners in response to stuttering, it was hypothesized that stuttered speech incurs increased gaze aversion relative to fluent speech. The possible importance in uncovering these visible reactions to stuttering is that they may contribute to the social penalty associated with stuttering.
To compare the eye gaze responses of college students while observing and listening to fluent and severely stuttered speech samples produced by the same adult male who stutters.
METHODS & PROCEDURES: Twelve normally fluent adult college students watched and listened to three 20-second audio-video clips of the face of an adult male stuttering and three 20-second clips of the same male producing fluent speech. Their pupillary movements were recorded with an eye-tracking device and mapped to specific regions of interest (that is, the eyes, the nose and the mouth of the speaker).
OUTCOMES & RESULTS: Participants spent 39% more time fixating on the speaker's eyes while witnessing fluent speech compared with stuttered speech. In contrast, participants averted their direct eye gaze more often and spent 45% more time fixating on the speaker's nose when witnessing stuttered speech compared with fluent speech. These relative time differences occurred as a function of the number of fixations in each area of interest. Thus, participants averted their gaze from the eyes of the speaker more frequently during the stuttered stimuli than the fluent stimuli.
CONCLUSIONS & IMPLICATIONS: This laboratory study provides pilot data suggesting that gaze aversion is a salient response to the breakdown in communication that occurs during stuttering. This response may occur as a result of emotional, cognitive, and pragmatic factors in communication partners. Regardless of the factors contributing to the response, its primary importance may be that gaze aversion is a visible communication partner signal informing the person stuttering that something is amiss in the interaction and hence, may contribute to inducing negative emotions in the persons stuttering, via engagement of the mirror neuron system. We suggest that witnessing and interpreting communication partner responses to stuttering may play a role when a person who stutters engages in future interactions, perhaps contributing to the development of covert strategies to hide stuttering.
口吃者通常非常清楚，他们的言语中断、沟通中断和异常的挣扎行为会引起沟通伙伴的反应。考虑到眼神行为对交际互动具有情感、认知和语用方面的暗示，并且先前的研究表明，听众对口吃的反应会增加生理唤醒，因此假设口吃的言语相对于流畅的言语会引起更多的目光回避。揭示这些对口吃的可见反应的重要性在于，它们可能导致与口吃相关的社会惩罚。
比较大学生在观察和聆听同一个口吃男性流利和严重口吃的言语样本时的目光注视反应。
12 名正常流利的成年大学生观看并聆听了一名口吃成年男性的三张 20 秒的音频视频口吃样本和三张 20 秒的流利言语样本。他们的瞳孔运动被眼动追踪设备记录，并映射到特定的感兴趣区域（即说话者的眼睛、鼻子和嘴巴）。
与口吃言语相比，参与者在目睹流利言语时注视说话者眼睛的时间多了 39%。相比之下，参与者在目睹口吃言语时更多地回避直接的目光注视，注视说话者鼻子的时间多了 45%。这些相对时间差异是每个感兴趣区域注视次数的函数。因此，与流利刺激相比，参与者在口吃刺激时更频繁地从说话者的眼睛转开目光。
这项实验室研究提供了初步数据，表明目光回避是对口吃时沟通中断的明显反应。这种反应可能是由于沟通伙伴的情感、认知和语用因素引起的。无论导致反应的因素是什么，其主要意义可能在于，目光回避是一种可见的沟通伙伴信号，告知口吃者互动中出现了问题，因此可能通过镜像神经元系统引起口吃者的负面情绪。我们认为，观察和解释沟通伙伴对口吃的反应可能在口吃者进行未来互动时发挥作用，这可能导致口吃者发展隐藏口吃的隐蔽策略。
