Limited Pre-Speech Auditory Modulation in Individuals Who Stutter: Data and Hypotheses.
Ludo Max, Ayoub Daliri
PMID 31465711WHAT IT FOUND
Adults who stutter show absent pre-speech auditory modulation when speaking normally.
However, adding a 100ms delay to their auditory feedback activates this modulation, eliminating the difference between stuttering and non-stuttering speakers. This suggests the deficit is specific to typical feedback conditions.
Key findings
01Adults who stutter show atypical or absent pre-speech auditory modulation (PSAM) during speech movement planning compared to typically fluent adults.
02When speaking with delayed auditory feedback (DAF), adults who stutter show increased PSAM, which normalizes the group difference between stuttering and non-stuttering speakers.
03In adults who stutter, the amount of PSAM when speaking with delayed auditory feedback correlates positively with their stuttering frequency.
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they foundWhat it means for SLPs
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What it does not show
The studies used short, monosyllabic words, so participants could produce almost all utterances fluently, limiting the ability to analyze neural activity specifically preceding disfluent moments. EEG data cannot directly determine the specific neural substrates or brain regions responsible for the observed modulation. The trial blocking design may have introduced differences in attentional demand across conditions. The relationship between PSAM and auditory-motor learning was inconsistent across groups and did not hold at the individual participant level for typically fluent speakers.
Declared interests
The work was supported by grants from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR). No commercial conflicts of interest were declared.
The easy way to misread this
Do not conclude that PSAM is a general auditory deficit. The lack of modulation is specific to typical auditory feedback conditions, as adults who stutter show normal modulation when hearing delayed feedback.