Laryngeal adjustments in stutterers

Abstract

Simultaneous recordings of voice and photoelectric glottogram during the speech production by stutterers were made. The subjects were asked to produce as quickly as possible each of 36 different meaningful words in response to a visual stimulus. The results revealed that some cases of part‐word (word initial voiceless stop) repetitions were accompanied by one or two extra opening gestures corresponding to the repeated aspiration noises. Similar trial‐and‐error types of the glottal movement were also detected even during silent delayed response time in some other cases which were auditorily judged as fluent. As for the production of the words begun with voiced sounds, unnecessary opening gestures prior to the vocalization for the initial voiced segment were sometimes observed, regardless of the judgements on its fluency and/or on the length of its latency. These findings suggest that at least this type of stuttering is linked to temporal disruption of the precisely controlled abducting and adducting gestures of the glottis, which are indispensable to fluent speech production. [Work supported by NINCDS and BRSG.]