Vincent Irena
State University of New York College at Cortland.
J Speech Lang Hear Res. 2017 Sep 18;60(9):2537-2550. doi: 10.1044/2017_JSLHR-S-16-0323.
Research on language planning in adult stuttering is relatively sparse and offers diverging arguments about a potential causative relationship between semantic and phonological encoding and fluency breakdowns. This study further investigated semantic and phonological encoding efficiency in adults who stutter (AWS) by means of silent category and phoneme identification, respectively.
Fifteen AWS and 15 age- and sex-matched adults who do not stutter (ANS) participated. The groups were compared on the basis of the accuracy and speed of superordinate category (animal vs. object) and initial phoneme (vowel vs. consonant) decisions, which were indicated manually during silent viewing of pictorial stimuli. Movement execution latency was accounted for, and no other cognitive, linguistic, or motor demands were posed on participants' responses. Therefore, category identification accuracy and speed were considered indirect measures of semantic encoding efficiency and phoneme identification accuracy and speed of phonological encoding efficiency.
For category decisions, AWS were slower but not less accurate than ANS, with objects eliciting more errors and slower responses than animals in both groups. For phoneme decisions, the groups did not differ in accuracy, with consonant errors outnumbering vowel errors in both groups, and AWS were slower than ANS in consonant but not vowel identification, with consonant response time lagging behind vowel response time in AWS only.
AWS were less efficient than ANS in semantic encoding, and they might harbor a consonant-specific phonological encoding weakness. Future independent studies are warranted to discover if these positive findings are replicable and a marker for persistent stuttering.
关于成人口吃语言规划的研究相对较少，并且对于语义和语音编码与流畅性障碍之间潜在的因果关系存在不同观点。本研究分别通过无声类别和音素识别，进一步调查了口吃成人（AWS）的语义和语音编码效率。
15名口吃成人和15名年龄及性别匹配的非口吃成人（ANS）参与了研究。基于在无声观看图片刺激时手动指示的上级类别（动物与物体）和初始音素（元音与辅音）判断的准确性和速度对两组进行比较。考虑了动作执行潜伏期，并且对参与者的反应没有提出其他认知、语言或运动要求。因此，类别识别准确性和速度被视为语义编码效率的间接指标，音素识别准确性和速度被视为语音编码效率的间接指标。
对于类别判断，口吃成人比非口吃成人速度慢但准确性并不低，两组中物体引发的错误和反应都比动物更多。对于音素判断，两组在准确性上没有差异，两组中辅音错误都多于元音错误，口吃成人在辅音识别上比非口吃成人慢，但在元音识别上没有差异，仅在口吃成人中辅音反应时间落后于元音反应时间。
口吃成人在语义编码方面比非口吃成人效率更低，并且他们可能存在特定于辅音的语音编码弱点。未来需要进行独立研究以确定这些积极发现是否可重复以及是否是持续性口吃的一个标志。
