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Journal of Neurodevelopmental Disorders
Published in: Journal of Neurodevelopmental Disorders 1/2015

Open Access 01-12-2015 | Research

Speech motor planning and execution deficits in early childhood stuttering

Authors: Bridget Walsh, Kathleen Marie Mettel, Anne Smith

Published in: Journal of Neurodevelopmental Disorders | Issue 1/2015

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Abstract

Background

Five to eight percent of preschool children develop stuttering, a speech disorder with clearly observable, hallmark symptoms: sound repetitions, prolongations, and blocks. While the speech motor processes underlying stuttering have been widely documented in adults, few studies to date have assessed the speech motor dynamics of stuttering near its onset. We assessed fundamental characteristics of speech movements in preschool children who stutter and their fluent peers to determine if atypical speech motor characteristics described for adults are early features of the disorder or arise later in the development of chronic stuttering.

Methods

Orofacial movement data were recorded from 58 children who stutter and 43 children who do not stutter aged 4;0 to 5;11 (years; months) in a sentence production task. For single speech movements and multiple speech movement sequences, we computed displacement amplitude, velocity, and duration. For the phrase level movement sequence, we computed an index of articulation coordination consistency for repeated productions of the sentence.

Results

Boys who stutter, but not girls, produced speech with reduced amplitudes and velocities of articulatory movement. All children produced speech with similar durations. Boys, particularly the boys who stuttered, had more variable patterns of articulatory coordination compared to girls.

Conclusions

This study is the first to demonstrate sex-specific differences in speech motor control processes between preschool boys and girls who are stuttering. The sex-specific lag in speech motor development in many boys who stutter likely has significant implications for the dramatically different recovery rates between male and female preschoolers who stutter. Further, our findings document that atypical speech motor development is an early feature of stuttering.
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Metadata
Title
Speech motor planning and execution deficits in early childhood stuttering
Authors
Bridget Walsh
Kathleen Marie Mettel
Anne Smith
Publication date
01-12-2015
Publisher
BioMed Central
Published in
Journal of Neurodevelopmental Disorders / Issue 1/2015
Print ISSN: 1866-1947
Electronic ISSN: 1866-1955
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1186/s11689-015-9123-8

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