Speech, Language, and Hearing Sciences, Purdue University, United States.
J Fluency Disord. 2012 Dec;37(4):344-58. doi: 10.1016/j.jfludis.2012.06.001. Epub 2012 Jul 24.
Stuttering is a disorder of speech production that typically arises in the preschool years, and many accounts of its onset and development implicate language and motor processes as critical underlying factors. There have, however, been very few studies of speech motor control processes in preschool children who stutter. Hearing novel nonwords and reproducing them engages multiple neural networks, including those involved in phonological analysis and storage and speech motor programming and execution. We used this task to explore speech motor and language abilities of 31 children aged 4-5 years who were diagnosed as stuttering. We also used sensitive and specific standardized tests of speech and language abilities to determine which of the children who stutter had concomitant language and/or phonological disorders. Approximately half of our sample of stuttering children had language and/or phonological disorders. As previous investigations would suggest, the stuttering children with concomitant language or speech sound disorders produced significantly more errors on the nonword repetition task compared to typically developing children. In contrast, the children who were diagnosed as stuttering, but who had normal speech sound and language abilities, performed the nonword repetition task with equal accuracy compared to their normally fluent peers. Analyses of interarticulator motions during accurate and fluent productions of the nonwords revealed that the children who stutter (without concomitant disorders) showed higher variability in oral motor coordination indices. These results provide new evidence that preschool children diagnosed as stuttering lag their typically developing peers in maturation of speech motor control processes.
The reader will be able to: (a) discuss why performance on nonword repetition tasks has been investigated in children who stutter; (b) discuss why children who stutter in the current study had a higher incidence of concomitant language deficits compared to several other studies; (c) describe how performance differed on a nonword repetition test between children who stutter who do and do not have concomitant speech or language deficits; (d) make a general statement about speech motor control for nonword production in children who stutter compared to controls.
口吃是一种言语生产障碍，通常发生在学龄前，许多关于其发病和发展的解释都暗示语言和运动过程是关键的潜在因素。然而，对于口吃的学龄前儿童的言语运动控制过程的研究非常少。听到新的非词并模仿它们会涉及多个神经网络，包括参与语音分析和存储以及言语运动编程和执行的神经网络。我们使用这个任务来探索 31 名 4-5 岁被诊断为口吃的儿童的言语运动和语言能力。我们还使用了敏感和特定的言语和语言能力标准化测试来确定哪些口吃儿童同时存在语言和/或语音障碍。我们样本中的大约一半口吃儿童有语言和/或语音障碍。如前一项研究所示，伴有语言或语音障碍的口吃儿童在非词重复任务上的错误明显多于正常发育的儿童。相比之下，被诊断为口吃但言语声音和语言能力正常的儿童在非词重复任务上的表现与他们正常流利的同龄人一样准确。对口齿运动时的运动分析表明，口吃（无伴随障碍）儿童的口腔运动协调指数变化较大。这些结果提供了新的证据，表明被诊断为口吃的学龄前儿童在言语运动控制过程的成熟方面落后于其正常发育的同龄人。
读者将能够：(a) 讨论为什么在口吃儿童中研究了非词重复任务的表现；(b) 讨论为什么当前研究中的口吃儿童与其他几项研究相比有更高的伴随语言缺陷发生率；(c) 描述在非词重复测试中，有和没有伴随语音或语言缺陷的口吃儿童之间的表现差异；(d) 对口吃儿童与对照组相比，非词产生的言语运动控制做出一般性陈述。
